MJ LENDERMAN & THE WIND
Sydney Opera House, March 25
ONE OF THE MORE IRRITATING descriptions of a certain type of, let’s say relaxed rock – where drawling vocals and dragging rhythms meet solid-state and sometimes squalling guitars – is the term slacker. It’s a phrase that works as a generational putdown (“kids today can’t be arsed” etc) and a cool kids boast (“we are above all that” etc) and regularly is applied to a lineage which runs from Neil Young to J Mascis (of Dinosaur Jr) to Kurt Vile to MJ Lenderman.
(Yes, like a kind of musical Buffy the Vampire Slayer, once in every generation a new one appears to fight vampires, demons and melismatic singers.)
The inaccuracy of this term and its assumptions was made abundantly clear four songs into this quite wonderful night of country-inflected rock from North Carolina’s Catholic saviour. A man of buoyant hair and sleepy eyes, with a band that look like ‘70s West Coast dudes washed through a ‘90s indie cycle - hell, the pedal steel/fiddle player even looks like a youngish John McVie.
We’d had the low twang opening/hair tossing climax of Wristwatch, and we would soon get almost funky and definitely bi-coastal with You Have Bought Yourself A Boat, but between came Rudolph. As Lenderman sang “how many roads must a man walk down till he learns/He’s just a jerk who flirts with the clergy nurse till it burns” there was a definite rhythm and momentum that drove rather than dozed. The fuzzed guitar diversions and snaking lines were ragged and sometimes gnarly; the pedal steel was curly and often tender. It moved air, chugging and chunky enough, but above it all was romantic.
No, not mere heartache and wishful thinking (like the alternative life favoured by our grandmothers: “I wouldn’t be in the seminary if I could be with you” was a scarily close to life concept) but in the idea of the music and its potential to redirect and maybe even change you with energy or hope or succour.
It is central to Lenderman: he loves this and believes in it, burrows into it in the new song, Pianos (melody descending, guitar ascending and hitting that War On Drugs sweet spot of blurry power and blissful harmonics) and soaks us all in it with the languorous You Don’t Know The Shape I’m In.
It’s why in She’s Leaving You, pushed by solid thumping drums that made the guitar even starker, you couldn’t miss that a Mac-like pop song was barely hiding inside its meatiness. And why a cover of Young’s Lotta Love in the encore was pulled together by a dreamer’s deep affection. It’s why both the slow country ramble, complete with fiddle, of Rip Torn, and the acceptance rather than resignation of TLC Cage Match, came from the perspective of someone down yet still felt like they were looking up.
Slacker? Nah, he cares. A lot.
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MJ Lenderman plays:
A&I Hall, Bangalow, March 28
The Loons, Christchurch, March 30
Meow Nui, Wellington, March 31
Powerstation, Auckland, April 1
A version of this review was originally published in The Sydney Morning Herald
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