MJ Lenderman handled his followers to a canopy of Counting Crow‘s ‘A Lengthy December’ at his present final week.
The musician took over The Orange Peel in his hometown of Asheville, North Carolina final Friday (December 20), as considered one of his rescheduled exhibits as a result of harm brought on by Hurricane Helene again in October.
The present was in assist of his newest album ‘Manning Fireworks‘ and noticed him and his band – The Wind, which options Lenderman’s Wednesday bandmate Xandy Chelmis – play a string of tracks from that LP together with ‘Joker Lips’, ‘Rudolph’, ‘Wristwatch’ and extra.
To shut out the gig, Lenderman handled the gang to a rendition of Counting Crows‘ 1996 monitor ‘A Lengthy December’, a becoming tune contemplating the pure catastrophe North Carolina had lately confronted.
As per Stereogum, his cowl adopted his different Wednesday bandmate, vocalist Karly Hartzman performing her personal rendition of ‘A Lengthy December’. The second came about throughout a gig at Cat’s Cradle in Carrboro, North Carolina on December 17, the place she was joined by Wednesday bassist Ethan Baechtold.
In contrast to Lenderman’s model, which felt true to the unique tune, Hartzman took a stripped-back method and carried out an acoustic model of the monitor, making the tune rather more emotional than it already is.
The monitor was first launched on December 2 1996 because the second single from Counting Crows’ second album ‘Recovering the Satellites’. It peaked at Quantity 5 on the US Billboard Trendy Rock Tracks Chart and Quantity One on the Canadian RPM 100 Hit Tracks charts. The next yr, the tune was re-released within the UK and peaked at Quantity 68 on the charts.
In different information, Lenderman lately joined the lineup for ØYA Pageant‘s 2025 version, alongside Chappell Roan, Khruangbin and Moist Leg.
Lenderman launched ‘Manning Fireworks’ this yr, which NME gave 4 stars, with Mia Hughes writing: “‘Manning Fireworks’ is an album that aches for its forged of freaks and losers, and its success in strolling that line is an indication of MJ Lenderman’s richly growing voice.”
Elsewhere, his tune ‘She’s Leaving You’ landed the Quantity 15 spot on NME‘s 50 Greatest Songs of 2024 checklist, with Daniel Peters writing: “Breakup songs can include multitudes: despair, uncertainty, full-throated resentment. MJ Lenderman’s writing on ‘She’s Leaving You’, then again, is characterised by a shrugging, clear-eyed unhappiness, leaning into the abject silence of heartbreak in its chorus: “It will get darkish, all of us bought work to do.” Slacker rock melancholia at its most enlightened.”
‘Manning Fireworks’ additionally earned the Quantity 14 spot on NME‘s 50 Greatest Albums of 2024 checklist, with editor Karen Gwee writing: “‘Kahlua shooter, DUI scooter,’ MJ Lenderman drawls on ‘Joker Lips’. Financial system is the Wednesday guitarist’s watchword on solo album ‘Manning Fireworks’. That devastating precision provides his portraits of sad-sacks, losers and egotists both a withering edge or empathetic nuance – typically each in the identical tune. An understated triumph.”
