{"id":155667,"date":"2025-06-03T20:18:10","date_gmt":"2025-06-03T20:18:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/155667\/"},"modified":"2025-06-03T20:18:10","modified_gmt":"2025-06-03T20:18:10","slug":"mj-lenderman-wows-crowd-following-sell-out-debut-glasgow-show","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/155667\/","title":{"rendered":"MJ Lenderman wows crowd following sell-out debut Glasgow show"},"content":{"rendered":"

Life is cyclical.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Music. Fashion. Politics. The longer you live the more you begin to wonder where you’ve seen something before.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"Band<\/a><\/p>\n

2<\/p>\n

MJ Lenderman was originally due to play St Luke’s but packed out the Old Fruitmarket\"Band<\/a><\/p>\n

2<\/p>\n

The band blended melancholic rock with sharp lyrics<\/p>\n

Thankfully to be familiar isn’t always unfortunate.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Reinvention. Reimagination. Really f*****g good music.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Enter MJ Lenderman. <\/p>\n

Bringing with him a hail of jagged chords, nasal vocals, and slide guitar that will make you wonder if the horrors of TikTok<\/a> the rehabilitation of Shed Seven ever happened.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Last year his album, Manning Fireworks, with its shades of alt country, topped end of year lists and sold out initial pressings on LP. That fervour was followed with a run of sold out shows.<\/p>\n

Tonight, his first performance in Glasgow<\/a>, was upgraded from St Luke’s to the glorious surroundings of the Old Fruitmarket.\u00a0<\/p>\n

And as the daybright noodlings of opener Joker Lips gives way the angst of On Your Knees the antique hoardings are rattling.\u00a0<\/p>\n

With a sound that veers from the ethereal sadness of Sparklehorse to Ragged Glory era Neil Young, you’d be forgiven for thinking MJ Lenderman was a man of advancing years but at 26 he’s got an eye for a sharp line.<\/p>\n

The swagger of youth, pushed on by his understated delivery, puts him at the centre of what feels like a slacker resurgence. But this is not grunge mark II – never has a calmer man wielded a Gibson SG.<\/p>\n

A faithful cover of Sparklehorse’s Maria’s Little Elbows ramps up the melancholia with its refrain of ‘Loneliness’ before the blissed out blues are over.<\/p>\n

The facade of millpond calmness slips with the steady pulse of She’s Leaving You. <\/p>\n

A gently chugging ode to the collapse of a relationship and a highlight from the album which builds, like so many things, to nothing. <\/p>\n

Collapsing into itself with a haze of backing vocals as Lenderman’s wandering guitar vanishes and ushering in jagged riff of Wristwatch, a two-fingered rebuttal, which explodes from the stage.\u00a0<\/p>\n

A string of facetious boasts ‘I’ve got a houseboat up in Buffalo\/and a wristwatch that’s a compass and a cell phone\/and a wristwatch that tells me you’re all alone’ are trapped by slashed chords and brooding bedroom vocals.<\/p>\n

To play two of your best known tracks mid set is a bold move. But confidence is not something lacking tonight.\u00a0<\/p>\n

With youth often comes a sense of naivety\u00a0and Bark At the Moon is a paean to inexperience. Chugging chords flirt with day-glo guitar solos before admitting: “I’ve never seen the Mona Lisa\/I’ve never really left my room\/I’ve been up too late with Guitar Hero\/Playing “Bark At The Moon”. <\/p>\n

Sharp tongued and slight of frame MJ Lenderman may well be this year’s great white hope for alt rock but don’t let that put you off.\u00a0<\/p>\n

He may be young but in this game youth doesn’t always equal inexperience – let’s hope his first time in Scotland isn’t his last.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Life is cyclical.\u00a0 Music. Fashion. Politics. The longer you live the more you begin to wonder where you’ve…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":155668,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7826],"tags":[748,41751,10841,918,4884,209,711,2535,712,2533,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-155667","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-glasgow","8":"tag-britain","9":"tag-country-music","10":"tag-festivals","11":"tag-glasgow","12":"tag-great-britain","13":"tag-longtail","14":"tag-pop-music","15":"tag-rock-music","16":"tag-scotland","17":"tag-section-showbizmusic","18":"tag-uk","19":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114621285561831267","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/155667","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=155667"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/155667\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/155668"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=155667"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=155667"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=155667"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}