Review
MJ Lenderman has the chops to quiet a rowdy Bristol
Americana's latest star boy kicked off his UK tour in the West Country with emotive force
In the two years since I moved to Bristol, having gone to a show at least once a week almost without fail, I had never heard an audience hushed to a complete silence until a point towards the end of MJ Lenderman and The Wind’s set at The Marble Factory this week. Heckling is not just the stuff of stand-up comedy nights in the West Country; it might have one of the busiest and healthiest music calendars in the UK, but you can bet all your Bristol Pounds that there’ll be a ceaseless humming of bar chat at the back, and a few well-meaning but daft remarks shouted out throughout a gig. Sometimes it can create a sense of rowdiness and energy for artists to buzz off, particularly in context of the city’s lauded music history. But at others it can be downright rude, as a jet-lagged Sam Evian expressed during his afternoon performance at Simple Things festival last year.
Even tonight, at one of the final shows at this venue before it and its world-famous sister venue Motion are demolished to become property developments, there’s a twerp shouting “One more song!” after the first, second and third songs of the evening. Lenderman isn’t phased, at one point bantering back that “I’m not talking to you” to someone else requesting a song on repeat.
His ability to roll with the punches is hardly a surprise, having emerged in the early 2020s as one of the chillest guys in indie rock. The explosive success of 2024’s Manning Fireworks and the spotlight it brightened on him have upgraded the venues on his UK tour and filled them to full capacity, but the young North Carolinian’s eyes still remain rooted on his Gibson SG as he and his band play earnestly but understatedly. But to my ears at least, something feels remarkable when MJ Lenderman and the Wind play the opening chords of new song ‘Pianos’: silence.
For a song called ‘Pianos’, there sure are a lot of strings taking over, but this is of course the theme for the evening. Xandy Chelmis plays the pedal steel as intricately as lead guitar, while Jon Samuels slides and bends his notes like he should be the one sitting down. It’s warm, early summer evening, but there’s a stoned, sweltering vibe from the band on stage that makes it feel like every song is being played 10 bpm slower. It’s especially noticeable on some of the more detailed songs, like an early showing of ‘Joker Lips’, but adds some satisfying beef to the headbangers like ‘She’s Leaving You’ and that cover of ‘Knockin”.
The track features on Cardinals At The Window, a mammoth 135-song compilation in benefit of flood relief programmes in North Carolina after the devastation of Hurricane Helene last year. Lenderman provides the context while tuning, but really it is the heady, eight-minute sprawl of guitars from a hushed, twinkling twang to a meandering wail that shuts us up.
Find out more about tickets for MJ Lenderman here
