My Favorite Album Of The 2020s So Far

In Praise Of "Live And Loose!" By MJ Lenderman And The Wind

I’m going to make a pledge that I will likely violate multiple times in the coming months: I promise not to be annoying about MJ Lenderman.

Granted, I can only control my own behavior. I can try, for instance, not to talk about Lenderman’s forthcoming album, Manning Fireworks, due in September, because I know readers don’t like it when music critics talk incessantly about records they won’t be able to hear for another two-plus months. (Especially when said music critic thinks said album is an absolute [REDACTED].) I can also try not to praise Lenderman as a potential generational songwriting talent, even though I absolutely do believe that, because that might create expectations no album or 25-year-old wunderkind can live up to. (I only promise not to do this now, by the way. Closer to the release might be a different story.)

I can try to do all of these things. However, I can’t control how you react to my behavior. If you find me annoying, well, that’s a you problem.

Here’s what I will talk about for now: My favorite album of the 2020s so far, which just so happens to be a live record recorded last summer by Lenderman and his backing band, The Wind, and released in November. Live And Loose! was generally well-reviewed upon release, but like most live records it was treated as an afterthought. There’s an unspoken bias against concert LPs among critics that ghettoizes them as fun diversions at best and contractual obligations at worst. Either way, they aren’t typically regarded as “real” albums. Add the fact that Live And Loose! came out right before Thanksgiving, which is roughly around the time that critics stop paying attention to new releases and zero in on their year-end lists, and the album seemed pre-destined for second-class status.

And yet I know I’m not alone among Lenderman heads in believing that Live And Loose! is the definitive entry in his discography thus far. (Again, we’re exempting Manning Fireworks from the conversation for now.) The tracklist doubles as a de-facto greatest hits for the 1.0 era of his career: The bulk comes from his fantastic 2022 breakout Boat Songs, only now the tunes have been given an extra layer of choogle-y guitar muscle plus an exquisitely greasy rhythm section. There are also songs from the pre-Boat Songs era like “Knockin’,” “Catholic Priest” and “Someone Get The Grill Out Of The Rain” that are transformed into fully operational heartbreakers, as well as the excellent single (and Manning Fireworks preview) “Rudolph,” which is simply one of the finest songs in a catalog in which “finest songs” status has become increasingly competitive.

Like all great live records, Live And Loose! succeeds at capturing a pivotal moment in an artist’s career. On Boat Songs, Lenderman writes vividly about being a young man who is in the process of becoming less young than he once was. He speaks in the language of sports references and allusions to his favorite records, because that’s how young men often communicate with one another. But what he’s really expressing is melancholy over the loss of innocence that inevitably comes with life experience. I think about the song “TLC Cagematch,” in which Lenderman sings about an all-out WWE championship brawl but is actually writing about his own creeping sense of mortality. One day you’re playacting in the basement with you fellow adolescent idiots, “half-naked / takin’ steroids,” and the next you’re trying to figure out what the hell the rest of your life is going to look like. (If Richard Linklater made albums instead of films, it would probably come out something like Boat Songs.)

On Live And Loose! Lenderman teases out the most memorable lyric from “TLC Cagematch” to stunning effect: “I always believed it every time you said / You're gonna be, like, our hero someday / Well, baby, all our heroes now are dead / 'Cause all things go.” On the live record, Lenderman’s limited but expressive tenor cracks a bit on “every time you said,” like Bruce Springsteen when he sings about essentially the same sentiment at the end of “Backstreets.” Bruce didn’t know anything about dead wrestlers, but he was similarly emotive about the end of childhood.

The moment Live And Loose! freezes in amber is actually two simultaneous moments in one — the first is Lenderman starting to come into his own as that potential generational talent I referenced earlier (sorry, this is the last time, I promise — for now), and the second is Lenderman’s own fleeting professional moment of innocence. Live And Loose! was recorded in Chicago after his appearance at the Pitchfork Music Festival in 2023, and then in Los Angeles not long after. Though really it’s mostly just the L.A. gig, since (as Lenderman explained to me in an interview) the Chicago recording was marred by one fan singing along with the songs loudly into the microphone. (The guy apparently got many of the words wrong — nevertheless, I feel like he is me and I am him.)

As a collection of his top-shelf material, Live And Loose! ultimately presents Lenderman as the complete package. So many (so so many!) young singer-songwriters try to do what he does and they miss the mark. Meanwhile Lenderman keeps succeeding with seemingly no effort at all. He just has a way of nailing the absolute correct balance. He’s funny but not jokey. There’s a strain of deep sadness in his songs but he’s not a mopey guy. He writes these witty, sad-eyed rock tunes — and plays some delectably crunchy riffs and guitar solos along the way — but you never feel like he’s trying hard to be seen as “real” or “authentic.” He has clear antecedents — Jason Molina, Neil Young, Wilco, Son Volt, alt-country generally. But he’s also different enough from his influences to seem like his own man. (As much as I love them, Jason Molina and Jay Farrar are not known for their sly one-liners.) He sort of reminds me of John Prine, who wrote similarly funny-sad songs and came across as a regular, unpretentious guy in interviews. 

Above all, what’s attractive about Lenderman is how guileless he seems. He is who he is, and he doesn’t appear to be at all self-conscious about it. I’ve interviewed him twice now, and both times he wasn’t particularly interested in being seen as smart or clever or “like a star.” He was affable, but he didn’t go out of his way to present himself as “a good person,” like so many artists are pressured to do now. He wasn’t selling anything. Which, of course, only made me way to buy into everything he does that much more.

Here’s my predicament: I feel it is my job to praise MJ Lenderman, because his songs deserve it. His latest single, “She’s Leaving You,” is yet another home run, perfectly setting the stage from the opening line (“You can put your clothes back on / she’s leaving you”) about a buffoonish middle-aged adulterer listening to Eric Clapton in a rented Ferrari on the way to licking his wounds in Las Vegas. (If that description gives you Warren Zevon vibes I wouldn’t discourage it.) But praising MJ Lenderman might very well undermine the quality I value most in him. Nothing threatens a refreshing lack of self-consciousness more than outsiders reminding the self what it should be conscious of.

Alas, this is my curse. I’m a music critic. And I’m annoying. But I’m trying not to be.

Self-Promotion Time

Over at Uproxx, I wrote about my favorite albums of 2024 so far. There are 24 in all, and I think they are all very good, and I think about three or four of them are great. I’ll let you decide what the exalted 13 to 17 percent is.

Also, if you're in the Chicago area, I’ll be at The Hideout talking about my latest book, There Was Nothing You Could Do: Bruce Springsteen’s “Born In The U.S.A.” And The End Of The Heartland, on July 9. Tickets are available here. If you’re around, I’d love to see you!