The world of Manning Fireworks, the fourth album by North Carolina-based guitarist and songwriter MJ Lenderman, is largely populated by sad sacks and losers: men of all stripes whose common features include drinking to excess, an inability to commit and, in general, a tendency to let down every woman they come into contact with.
This archetype has become a calling-card subject for Lenderman, a 25-year-old shredder who writes male characters with a particularly exacting, withering eye. One widely shared meme about his new single She’s Leaving You, framed like a New York Times op-ed, asks “Is the Cure to Male Loneliness MJ Lenderman?”; another reads “Made the fish I just caught watch She’s Leaving You by MJ Lenderman.”
