Album of the Week: MJ Lenderman – Boat Songs
Album of the Week: MJ Lenderman – Boat Songs
This week sees the reissue of Boat Songs, MJ Lenderman’s third studio album, originally released in 2022. Its reissue arrives on the back of Lenderman’s speedy ascent as one of indie-rock’s most celebrated and talked-about songwriters. Though Boat Songs earned widespread critical acclaim on release, its home on the small Dear Life Records meant that finding a physical copy the first time around proved fairly difficult. Thankfully, this fantastic album, which is superior, to my ears, even to the excellent Manning Fireworks (2024), is finally back on vinyl and CD with much wider distribution.
While his self-titled debut and Ghost of Your Guitar Solo, both also reissued this week, laid the groundwork for his indie-rock spin on country and folk, Boat Songs is where the Asheville, North Carolina musician truly perfects his craft. As we’ve come to expect from Lenderman, the record is full to the brim with pathos, melancholy, wit, and just the right amount of slacker charm in both production and performance. There’s an effortlessness to his writing that makes it so fresh and fluid, and ensures Boat Songs is such a joy to listen to, and frequently a genuine rush.
Many of these tracks have become live staples over the last three years, as captured on his superb Live & Loose! album from earlier this year. And they still hit just as hard on re-listens here. Opener Hangover Game finds Lenderman giving his own version of Michael Jordan’s infamous 1997 “Flu Game,” insisting, with a knowing smile, that Jordan, despite scoring 38 points, was simply hungover like any regular person, and the official excuses weren’t fooling anyone. Another American sports icon, Dan Marino, takes centre stage on the lo-fi, fuzzed-out, country-rocking Dan Marino, a wry, yet touching lament about seeing his image on a cereal-box replaced by successor Tom Brady.
But Boat Songs isn’t just jokes and smart observations. TLC Cage Match ponders the very real toll of professional wrestling, how scripted outcomes do nothing to soften the damage done to bodies for the sake of entertainment. Elsewhere, the failures and false promises of the American dream haunt another stand-out track, the cathartic Toontown. Further release comes in the fantastic Neil Young & Crazy Horse-like crunch of You Are Every Girl to Me, and the superb penultimate track Tastes Just Like It Costs, which further presents Lenderman’s ongoing preoccupations with everyday consumerism and things never quite living up to expectations, bleeding briefly into the political with the sharp couplet: “what did I tell you / about wearing that dumb hat / you know the one I’m talkin’ about.” I think we all know which hat.
Across Boat Songs, Lenderman carves out his own corner within the vast landscape of American music, wading into the ditch with the distorted glory of Neil Young, basking in the glory of ’90s American alt-rock, and orbiting traces of Jason Molina, Mark Linkous (Sparklehorse), and David Berman (Silver Jews).
