MJ Lenderman & the Wind at the Sydney Opera House, Photograph: Jordan Munns
MJ Lenderman & the Wind performed at the Sydney Opera House, on Tubowgule, Gadigal Country, on Tuesday 25 March.
Nobody can see the future, least of all in matters of success in the arts. Performers poised to be the Next Big Thing can leave before they’ve even arrived. But there were augurs concerning the ecstatic rise of MJ Lenderman during the Sydney date of his Australian tour supporting Wednesday in March 2024.
Lenderman was ostensibly the support act – as well as Wednesday’s lead guitarist – and he looked nervous when he stepped onstage with his backing band The Wind. Halfway through the second song, “Hangover Game,” the North Carolinian songwriter noticed that the audience was singing along. “I didn’t expect you to know these words,” he said, genuinely moved. Halfway around the world, singing a song about Michael Jordan, Lenderman had found a devoted listenership.
So, one album release and 12 months later, is it a surprise that Lenderman booked a gig at the Sydney Opera House – and sold it out? The person who seemed most surprised was Lenderman himself, telling the audience early on in the set that it was his biggest headline show to date.
Photograph: Jordan Munns
There’s no mystery surrounding the reason for his success: Lenderman writes gangly, half-cocked rock songs that find the universal in the specifics. Everybody wants to find the universal in the specifics, but it’s hard work turning a ditty about an Apple watch into a paean to loneliness, as Lenderman does on “Wristwatch.” Harder work still to make it all look so easy – Lenderman’s songs all feel like they were written while lazily considering getting up from the couch.
The whole show was defined by a sort of operatic casualness. Songs merged into one another, guitar riffs were performed expertly and then gently abandoned, and the long sonic breakdown of “Bark At The Moon” felt like a garage jam session conducted on the surface of Mars.
A lack of significant pace can be its own form of excitement, and the almost-two hour set felt both very long, and far too short.
At the heart of it all was Lenderman’s lyrics. Most talented songwriters get called a poet at one point or another – Lenderman actually is that. He has a style of his own, forging heartache out of compact, absurd, humdrum jokes. “I bought fake Jordans / They weren’t even shoes,” he sang on “Hangover Game”; “We sat under a half-mast McDonald’s flag,” on “You Don’t Know The Shape I’m In.”
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Photograph: Jordan Munns
On the way home from the gig, the group of Lenderman-heads I was with made a game out of noting which sentences, tossed off naturally in conversation, had the unassuming, absurd spark of a Lenderman lyric. “If you look up the light bulb online, you’ll find the instructions,” someone said. “Smoking ganja on the grassy knoll,” was another. The game affirmed Lenderman’s unique style – instantly recognisable, mimicable, and evocative of the sad, funny streak that lies at the heart of all modern things.
And make no mistake: Lenderman is sad. Most of the songs on his 2024 album Manning Fireworks tackle divorce or separation – separation from the self just as frequently as separation from the other. But the vibe of the crowd leaving the show was euphoric. Sometimes you can find catharsis by simply calling things out by name.
One of the most haunting, beautiful moments of the show came during the chorus to “Rip Torn.” “There’s men and then there’s movies,” Lenderman sang, plaintively. “There’s milkshakes and there’s smoothies.” I had no idea what he meant – but I also knew, with my whole self, exactly what he meant.
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Joseph Earp is a writer and painter. Follow him here.
