Hi, everyone. Bigthony Boomtano here, the internet's busiest music nerd. It's time for a review of this new MJ Lenderman record, Manning Fireworks.

This is said to be the fourth full-length solo album of singer, songwriter, and guitarist, a multi-instrumentalist, really, Mr. MJ Lenderman. Somebody who on the indie circuit I have been seeing get quite a bit of buzz lately from some key placements on the latest records of Waxahatchee as well as Kevin Abstract. MJ also happens to be one-fifth of the up and coming indie and alt country outfit Wednesday, who had a very well-received album last year, which puts Mr. Lenderman here in a spot where this latest record of his is likely to see a bump in attention, probably the most he's seen on a solo record so far, which has most definitely been the case since this thing came out.

And the reception for it has been incredibly warm. So warm, in fact, I feel like I had to give the album a shot myself. Though I can't really say that after having heard this thing, I'm ready to jump into the chorus of people singing its praises.

Just for anyone who isn't in the know, the rubric of influences going into the music on this album is not all that different than what you might have caught on Wednesday's album last year. For sure, it's cool to hear new and up and coming artists repping a tasteful combination of slacker rock, of indie folk, as well as alt country and '90s radio rock that's obviously throwing out a lot of nods to the greats: Silver Jews, Simon Joyner, Pavement, Wallflowers, Neil Young, maybe a little Counting Crows, too. But while MJ Lenderman's sound is a very studied amalgamation of all of those things and more, a lot of the time the execution leaves a lot to be desired, as I think there's very little flair or panache to how any of these sounds are explored on this record.

Often, MJ and his collaborators hammer through really basic beats and chord progressions as if they were just a very D-League local band that your uncle was in – see "Wristwatch" or "She's Leaving You" or even "On My Knees" – which honestly makes a lot of these tracks tiresome to listen to. In addition to the occasional grating fiddle layer, as well as MJ's actual voice fronting these songs, too — to say Mr. Lenderman is an uninteresting singer would be a massive understatement. Simultaneously, he has this very youthful, boyish timbre to his voice, but he delivers it in a way to where he's trying to come across as like he's just weary beyond his ears, which if that was actually the case, you would think he'd have more to say or the capacity to actually bring some genuine wit or tragedy to his writing.

In fact, there are numerous lyrical highlights across this record that to me, read as just laughably bad, like on the song "Rip Torn", whose title at first had me thinking, is this going to be some like Men in Black reference with the actor? But no, the opening lyric is actually, "I guess I'll call you Rip Torn / The way you got tore up." The lyrics from here read like a bunch of hokey non-sequiturs that are meant to paint, I guess, a picture of somebody who's coming out of a hangover or coming down from something.

But the words MJ uses are so preposterous. They undercut the gravity of the situation. "Passed out in your lucky charms / Lucky doesn't mean much." Oh, but wait a second. The title of this thing IS a Men in Black reference: "You said there's men / And then there's movies / And then there's Men in Black / You said there's milkshakes and there's smoothies / You always lose me when you talk like that."

Yeah, man. Me too.

Beyond this, the track comes to this disappointingly inconclusive finish that will most likely have you asking what the hell even the point, as MJ's lyrics are often pretty scant and repetitive across many of these tracks, and he formulates them a lot of the time like he's just constantly setting up one-liners only for the second part of them to hit you in the face like a rake you stepped on or a wet fart.

"How many roads must a man walk down till he learns he's just a jerk who flirts with the clergy nurse till it burns?"

"I've never seen the Mona Lisa / I've never really left my room / I've been up here too late with guitar hero / Playing Bark at the Moon."

Plus, there's all these moments where it feels like he's trying to just force in a bunch of popular culture references only to try to turn them tragic in some way, like where he's a coward cutting Joker lips into a rubber mask or a deleted scene of Lightning McQueen blacked out at full speed. Is this all like a loss of innocence thing? It just reads like bad TikTok poetry. Like, Oh, man, you were my biggest red flag, but red's my favorite color.

There's also just so little in terms of topical and narrative follow-through on a lot of these tracks, too. Like, "She's Leaving You", for example, which in terms of a trope, a songwriting trope, this is the easiest layup on the entire record. Songs about her leaving you have been written thousands of times at this point. And MJ, despite titling his track, this just can't seem to muster up the gumption to do it.

Because in the four minutes this song lasts, he can't really put into words why this is happening, why it even frigging matters. "You said Vegas is beautiful at night / And it's not about the money / You just like the lights." Yeah, obviously, nobody talks about how beautiful Vegas is at night. Thinking about the money. Of course, they're reacting to the lights. Furthermore, why are they in the song to begin with? Because they don't add to any understanding as to why she's leaving you. They just come across like meaningless filler, like the lazy guitar solo in the second half of the track.

So, yeah, up until this point, pretty much everything on the album is just severely unimpressive. But from here, there are some ending oddities to the record that I suppose are of some note. The song, "You Don't Know the Shape I'm In", I think, is the closest this record comes to, some lyrical coherence. That is until MJ spirals into getting just a bit too meta and is lyrically referencing the clarinets going on in the background of the song, drawing attention to them for some random reason. It certainly doesn't contribute to anything he's saying on the track earlier.

And also the track "Bark at the Moon", surprisingly, ends with about six minutes of droning guitars, bass, feedback, and effects, which for a record of this style is just so damn random and out of place. But simultaneously, this is about as interesting as the album gets, because let me tell you, if there's anything exciting about this record, it's not in the lyrics, it's not in MJ's grasp of melody or song structure, it's not in the very bland, indie country rock pastiche that's going on production-wise most of the time.

In fact, as far as singer-songwriter records go this year, I would say this project is like the definition of underachievement with only a handful of tolerable tracks to spare, which is why I'm feeling a light three on it.

Anthony Fantano. MJ Lenderman. Forever.