Well, we’ve almost made it through another stupid year and it’s time to look back at the pop culture that got us through it all. As for writing about music, I definitely didn’t do that a ton this year, but hey, that’s what these short year-end reviews are for – catching up a bit before we head into posting our Top 10s. I’ll try to fit a few of these reviews in the next couple weeks, but as always, the hustle and bustle of the holidays and the end of the year may prevent me from writing as many of them as I’d like. Anyways, I haven’t written about new music since the summer, so what better place to start than an album that brought some strong late summer vibes, but through its sturdy songwriting has stuck with me into these colder months.
I’ve already documented my affinity for MJ Lenderman and his meteoric rise as indie rock’s current “it boy”. Whether it was his previous break-out solo album, his work with the band Wednesday, or playing on another one of 2024’s great indie-country albums, Waxahatchee’s Tigers Blood. He’s a low-key enough figure that he can fade into the background of a backing band, but also has such a perceptive eye that he can craft a funnily insightful lyric like a pro. There are so many quotable lyrics on this album, from “Once a perfect little baby, now a jerk” to “I guess I’ll call you Rip Torn, the way you got torn up”, yet at the same time Lenderman isn’t some pseudo-Dylan rattling off as many clever lyrics as it takes to impress you.
As much as I’d like to paint this album as some sort of triumphant seizing of the moment for Lenderman, it’s still a pretty shaggy, understated album, occasionally filled with some impressive guitar pyrotechnics. Each song sees him wrangling contemplative songwriting with the squall of indie noise and wabbly fiddles into something that feels like a late summer evening spent making sense of youth’s freedom winding down. There’s an innocence to the way Lenderman sings about things like playing Guitar Hero in your parents’ basement, but the album’s more introspective moments paired with the gravity of his native Ashville, NC being thrashed by Hurricane Helene later this year feels like something more ominous is on the horizon. But whatever that is, Lenderman will always be armed with a crunchy guitar lick and a plainspoken aside to disarm it if need be.