MJ Lenderman says he doesn’t usually work from a fixed set list. He likes to feel the room – the crowd's energy – and play whatever seems to fit. If that’s the case, then the young singer-songwriter from Asheville must have sensed excitement turned up to eleven from the crowd in Washington’s 9:30 Club on Thursday night.
He and his band, The Wind, hit the ground running with a blistering quartet of “Rudolph,” “Inappropriate,” “Toontown,” and “Suv,” which is about as loud and grungy as he is apt to get.
The fact that three of those four songs are from his earlier albums should not suggest that 2024’s critically acclaimed Manning Fireworks wasn’t well-represented. The Wind performed in front of an enormous blowup of the album cover and would eventually get around to playing every track from the album.
MJ Lenderman delivers sprawling and amazing show in DC
But, as Lenderman noted, they’ve been playing many shows and have to do some things to keep it interesting.
On Thursday, that included ripping through 24 songs in under two hours – songs from every phase of Lenderman’s short but prolific career.
While waiting to enter the club, I heard more than one concertgoer recall seeing Wilco at the same venue. It’s no surprise that Lenderman attracts a Wilco crowd. Like Jeff Tweedy, the 26-year-old is capable of writing vivid portraits of loneliness, aimlessness, and passion that can morph from progressive country into a wailing jam band at a moment’s notice.
Nowhere was that more apparent than on “Bark at the Moon,” the gentle country tune that closes Manning Fireworks. What begins as a shaggy dog of a song about lost love (“I could really use your two cents, babe – I could really use the change”) builds into a swirling vortex of noise that morphs into the sludgy explosion of “I Ate Too Much at the Fair,” from 2021’s Ghost of Your Guitar Solo.
Lenderman and the Wind would ride that seesaw most of the night. The crowd sang along to recent favorites from the latest album like “Joker Lips” and the title track. On that song – which is not about Peyton or Eli Manning – Lenderman brought out an acoustic guitar.
He claimed it was something new for him – one of those things he does to keep himself interested. The acoustic appeared on “Rip Torn” and “Manning Fireworks,” and was given the rest of the night off.
Bass player Landon George picked up a fiddle for those acoustic numbers, and then brought it back for the first encore of the evening – “Turkey Brothers Jam,” in which he exhorted the crowd in Washington, DC to not lose hope in its fight against fascism.
Lenderman closed out the night with a couple of covers. The first was Bob Dylan’s “Something There is About You,” resurrected from Dylan’s 1973 album Planet Waves. The second was “Dancing in the Club,” a song from Nate Amos and This is Lorelei.
It was the second time the crowd heard “Dancing in the Club.” Amos, a New York musician, opened the night to support Lenderman. He performed the song with This is Lorelei and returned to the stage almost three hours later to join the Wind in their cover.
It’s not hard to see why Lenderman and Amos have an affinity for each other’s music. Both offer eclectic blends that build off a singer-songwriter base but go to various unexpected places. Amos often sounds like Beat Happening’s Calvin Johnson, had the iconic post-punk ’90s rocker availed himself of modern sound technology instead of remaining decidedly lo-fi.
The results can be spectacular, as on “I’m All F****d Up” and the off-kilter ‘60s psychedelia of “Two Legs.” Though Amos employs plenty of tape effects, Lorelei’s music is primarily based on sharp songwriting and the rhythms laid down by drummer Bailey Wollowitz and bassist Al Nardo, formerly of Sloppy Jane and Water From Your Eyes.
During the rest of his sprawling set, Lenderman served up a Patterson Hood cover (“Uncle Disney”) and a couple of his older songs that namedrop sports stars, “Hangover Game” (Michael Jordan) and “Knockin’” (John Daly), as well as the rarely played “Live Jack,” which pictures Jack Nicholson at a Lakers game.
All in all, it was quite the musical journey. Lenderman and Lorelei return to 9:30 for a second sold-out show on Friday night before finishing with a few more East Coast dates. Then, at the end of the month, the Wind heads across the pond for a brief tour of the U.K.