There’s a sense of solace and welcome to MJ Lenderman’s music, a warmth that runs counter to a wet and biting Monday night in mid-November, and carries all the way to the back wall of a packed London Garage. Its affability lies partly in a certain familiarity – songs carried with the gait of Pavement or Guided By Voices, while Lenderman’s voice sits high and back and wavering, like Will Oldham or Jason Molina.
But it’s also down to the distinction of the musicianship on display tonight; Lenderman’s band is named the Wind, and they play with a kind of camaraderie – easy, effortless, at times jostling like puppies. Pedal steel and percussionist Xandy Chelmis’s frenetic moves providing a foil for the frontman’s loping demeanour.
Lenderman’s ascent to new musical darling has taken six years and four solo records, including 2022 breakthrough, Boat Songs, and this year’s lauded Manning Fireworks, which make up the bulk of tonight’s setlist. His songs set goofy observation up against unguarded sensitivity, in a way that is beguiling and smart and frequently poetic, and is faintly reminiscent of Warren Zevon. It’s a style that works particularly well live, when lines such as “Go rent a Ferrari and sing the blues / Believe that Clapton was the second coming,” can sound conversational – a little bar-room back and forth among friends.
The crowd – largely male, and thoroughly reverent, light up for what we might loosely call the hits – Wristwatch, and She’s Leaving You. Knockin’, a single based on golf pro John Daly’s extraordinary cover of a Bob Dylan tune some 15 years ago, prompts much chorusing and air-punching.
As in most of Lenderman’s songs, beneath tonight’s bonhomie there is the tug of something darker. The track Pianos, taken from fundraiser compilation Cardinals at the Window, is dedicated to the singer’s hometown, Asheville, North Carolina – the site of a recent devastating hurricane, and only today, 53 days on, seeing the restoration of drinkable water.
Much else has happened in those 53 days, of course. Towards the end of his set, Lenderman introduces a cover of Neil Young’s Lotta Love: “There’s so much fucked up shit going on in the world,” he says. “The election results just came through and a Canadian friend sent me this song … you guys probably need it too.” And for a moment, the solace of his music seems more welcome than ever.
• At the Garage, London, 19 November, then touring.
