MJ Lenderman: Everything is embarrassing
With his star on the ascent, North Carolina songwriter MJ Lenderman discusses the weight of expectation for this week’s cover feature.
MJ Lenderman, the 25-year-old with the inscrutable, boyish smile has been declared by dads – and, of course, the Internet – to be a generational songwriter. His guitar work unleashes a particular chaos on Wednesday’s terrible beauty, the country-shoegaze band he plays in fronted by his ex-partner Karly Hartzman. But as an artist in his own right, shyly evolving in parallel, Lenderman has grown capable of a certain ramshackle storytelling found only at the bottom of a bottle and between the covers of the Southern American realists.
Lenderman seemed to shrug his way into music. He grew up a lapsed Catholic, driving down North Carolina highways with billboards promising that hell is hot and only your guilt can save you – and so all of this, his career, his work and the fact he is obliged to talk about it sometimes, is like a sin teased out in a confessional. “90% of the time it’s embarrassing, really,” he says. “To me, at least. I don’t know…”
Out today, Manning Fireworks, his fourth album and studio debut since signing to taste-making label ANTI-, is an ugly reflection of human frailties in a way that feels painfully, personally, familiar. With a self-aware smirk and a clumsy drawl, his lyrics are humdrum portraits of men who are disappointed, or disappointments – “jerks” – littered with sports in-jokes, off-kilter pop culture references and deliberate misquotes. Because that, after all, is how guys talk to each other when other words fail.
The record presented an opportunity for Lenderman to define who he is an artist on his own terms – beyond the internet’s mythology-making (“Showing a guy an MJ Lenderman song for the first time is like jingling keys for a baby”, one tweet declared); beyond the context of Wednesday, and beyond his unpolished, Bandcamp beginnings.
Still, Lenderman has no illusions of perfection. “I’ve had to recognise that it’s normal to not have the best ideas every day,” he says. “And that’s okay.”
Read the full story by Sophie L. Walker now over on Best Fit.
Buoyed by the power of friendship, Hinds goes global
Since their first interview with Best Fit a decade ago, Hinds have been through it all. They’ve lost two band members, countless boyfriends, and, occasionally, their sanity. But armed with the unbreakable bond of longtime best-friendship and an unrelenting drive to succeed, Carlotta Cosials and Ana Perrote are finally gearing up for their biggest moments yet.
Their bond stretches back to 2010, where they met at an old boyfriend’s house. “I remember exactly the clothes she was wearing!” Perrote beams as Cosials groans to remember her old wardrobe. “She had this white fake fur coat, and she arrived driving her mum’s van and smoking. I was underage so was already thinking ‘Oh my fucking god, this girl looks so incredibly cool and funny’. It was an instant crush – right away we stopped caring about the guy."
Cosials grins: “We were unleashed!”
The band’s latest incarnation, Viva Hinds, brims with this optimistic, powerful spirit. More than anything, Viva Hinds its a cry of endurance. It was the group’s fans who first coined the phrase, chanting it in venues. Eventually, it stuck. “Long live Hinds!” Cosials grins. “There’s no way to say it better with fewer words. It’s a triumph!”
The title is an apt parallel for where the duo find themselves now: “Bandmates leaving, COVID, all the things that seemed like they could have finished the band instead gave us the opportunity to direct what we think is our best album so far," Perrote continues.
The album is a thank you to not only their fans, but those close to the pair: “Everything we’ve been through over the last couple of years has been dealt with internally, with doors closed," Perrote says. “Rather than ‘Viva Hinds’ being chanted in venues, it was whispered by our families and friends."
Cosials and Perrote bask in the band’s survival, oozing pride through their smiles and words. Their new era is a testament to the power of their friendship, a bond they know won’t break.
Hello Mary are On the Rise
Despite only being in their late teens and early twenties, Hello Mary have the sensibility and the skill to create frenetic anthems that capture the essence of the 90s grunge and alternative scene. Their debut record, Hello Mary, earned them critical acclaim for its gritty guitar riffs, commanding beats and melodic vocals. Though its “bare bones” aesthetic was lauded and praised as “intentional”, the choices, while effective, were also necessary at the time.
Hello Mary was recorded in a rush — one week, to be exact — due to financial and logistical constraints. “We were all just really figuring out how to be a band,” offers drummer Stella Wave, who recognises that these limitations were what gave the album its pressing sense of haste. And yet, somehow, Hello Mary was also an album that its members had been gearing up for all their lives; all growing up in musical households and making music from an early age.
Now, with years of experience behind them and one LP under their belt, Hello Mary has finally been given room to breathe. And to level up. On Emita Ox, their stunning second record, Hello Mary finally have sunk into themselves as a group and produced some of their most personal work yet. “This album feels more like what I wish was our debut,” bassist Mikaela Oppenheimer comments. “It feels a lot more representative of the music we listen to and the music we want to make.” Emita Ox documents a sustained period of growth, resilience and assertiveness. It both sounds and feels like a bigger statement of autonomy for Hello Mary.
Kate Crudgington
Three things to get excited about this week
The stage: Each year, Best Fit takes over the Piano Stage at End of the Road Festival, bringing punters a surprise lineup of the latest and greatest we’ve had on repeat. This year was no different, and we were pleased to welcome Jess Williamson, Bill Ryder-Jones and Gruff Rhys, Master Peace, Ichiko Aoba, Clarissa Connelly, Sarah Meth and more at our little outpost in the Larmer Tree Gardens. Until next year!
The premiere: Today in Toronto, Elton John’s new documentary, Elton John: Never Too Late, will have its world premiere. Featuring newly uncovered archival footage and fresh interviews, it’s one of the hottest tickets at the Toronto Film Festival and will be attended by Sir Elton and David Furnish themselves. If you’re making the trip to TIFF, tickets are still on sale. The film will enjoy a wider release on Disney+ in December.
The album: Admittedly, it’s going to be easy to get swept up in the series of blockbuster releases hitting streaming these next few weeks, but one to keep on your radar this week is Okay Kaya’s Oh My God - That’s So Me. On her third LP, she continues to build on her world of weird electronica, embracing misfit-ness and spinning it to tackle all from struggling to exist in the context (yes, indeed) to the myth of Sisyphus.
Something Old, Something New
Every week, we share recommendations from the Best Fit community on two iconic records - one from the past, one from the present. This week, writer Becca Bloch offers thoughts on Hot Flash Heat Wave’s Neapolitan (2015) and Gretel’s Slugeye (2022).
Formed in Davis, California and now residing in San Francisco, Hot Flash Heat Wave’s music feels like the touch of the salt from the ocean and the heat radiating from your car on a hot summer day. Neapolitan, their debut album released in 2015, brings listeners to an atmosphere that's somewhere between the Pacific Coast Highway right before sunset and your older brother’s friends' underground basement band show. Filled with a distinct blend of indie pop and surf rock, Hot Flash Heat Wave’s upbeat rhythm and jangly guitars are sure to get anyone out of their chairs and on their feet. It’s an album that rings of adolescence and what it’s like to be young.
Maddy Haenlein, or better known as her stage name Gretel Hänlyn, is a singer-songwriter and guitarist from West London. Her debut album Slugeye is an out of body listening experience. The project was written and co-produced with electronic producer, Mura Masa. It’s beautifully heartbreaking, in no small part to Hänlyn’s strikingly unique vocal tone. Slugeye is grunge on the surface but raw and dark at its core. Her voice is deep and transcendent, almost hypnotising, just as mystical as the stunning album artwork that resembles a renaissance painting gracing the cover of the record.
Listen to the week in new music by following our Discovery playlist
Dropping at midnight every Thursday, follow our playlist for a taste of the best new music from the most exciting breaking artists – 20 new tracks, top-loaded from the last five days in music and on repeat in the Best Fit office right now.
Leading the selection this week are new tracks from Adult DVD, Kaeto, 100%WET, MJ Lenderman and coverstar Fan Girl.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S6n_29srVlk ?