You may know Asheville, NC‘s MJ Lenderman as a member of Wednesday, who released a great album on Orindal Records last year. But aside from that, Lenderman also makes his own distinctive solo music. Forming outlines in exploratory jam sessions with his roommates, then performing ab lib vocals over the top, his songs are expeditious creations, often created and recorded within the same mammoth session. This style was facilitated by a writing exercise developed by Dave Berman, in which Lenderman wrote twenty ostensibly unconnected lines a day then returned to salvage the best. This technique led to a prolific period of creativity last spring that would eventually birth Ghost of Your Guitar Solo, a full-length album out later this month on Dear Life Records.
Lead single ‘Someone Get The Grill Out Of The Rain’ introduced the record, a barely sixty second snapshot of the country-infused, rough-around-the-edges approach that MJ Lenderman offers. With as many nods to punk as to folk, and influenced by Deep South outcasts like Harry Crews and Larry Brown, Lenderman finds wry lightness and absurdity in things. A style sometimes cutting and sometimes playful, unapologetically odd and always centred on the curious banalities of life, where humour and sadness marble into one.
Today we have the pleasure of sharing the record’s second single, ‘Gentleman’s Jack’. Delivered with a hushed intimacy, the song has a disarming directness so typical of MJ Lenderman’s work. A mood at once affirming and unnerving in its ability to evoke an honest thought (and one captured perfectly in the confined, shadowed video). In doing so, it captures the Crews-style eccentric in its true form, a character standing oblique to the world but somehow staring it down too. As though only from the left field does a proper view emerge, and the veil can be lifted from the American Dream.
Of course I know we are so small
I put it in perspective, still I can’t help believe that someday I’ll have it all
Jack Nicholson’s courtside seat
purple foam imprinted with celebrity ass cheek
and if the Lakers get beat, well it won’t mean much to meOf course I know we are in charge
Eight billion little bosses doing eight billion little jobs
still I find myself stressing like I’m tied to the tracks
so I bought myself a hammock to try to relax
and I found two trees with the nerve enough to hold me
Ghost of Your Guitar Solo will be released on 26th March. Pre-order now from the MJ Lenderman Bandcamp page.
