MJ Lenderman - You Don't Know The Shape I'm In

Jake Lenderman plays and records under the name MJ Lenderman. He put out his first album in 2019. In addition to his solo work, he’s been a member of the band Wednesday, and he’s also featured on the Waxahatchee hit song “Right Back to It." In September 2024, the fourth MJ Lenderman album came out. It’s called Manning Fireworks. The New Yorker named it the best album of the year, and Stereogum, Rolling Stone and Pitchfork all put it in their top ten. For this episode, I talked to Jake about one of the songs from that album, called “You Don’t Know the Shape I’m In.” The song itself took shape in a few different ways. Coming up, you’ll hear the way the song started as a demo, and then how that got fleshed out, and then how it got rebuilt, and then how Jake completely reimagined the whole thing. For more info, visit songexploder.net/mj-lenderman https://songexploder.net/mj-lenderman.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Hrishikesh Hirway?

  You're listening to Song Exploder, where musicians take apart their songs and, piece by piece, tell the story of how they were made. I'm Rishi Kesh Hirway.

• 0:11Hrishikesh Hirway?

  I'm going to be on tour, playing some shows this fall. I'm going to be in London on Wednesday, November 18th. I'm going to be performing solo at Rough Trade Records on Denmark Street, and I'm going to be in conversation about my music moderated by one of my favorite actors and writers, Matthew Bainton. And a ticket to the show also gets you a copy of my album on vinyl or CD. And in December, I'm going to be on tour supporting S. Carry. We're going to be playing a bunch of shows in the Northeast US. So I hope to see you in one of those places. You can find all the details and get links to tickets at songexploder.net/live. That's songexploder.net/live.

• 0:55Hrishikesh Hirway?

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• 1:39Hrishikesh Hirway?

  New episodes are coming out every other Tuesday. Listen to Before the Moment with Nile Rodgers wherever you get your podcasts. Thanks to Steo for sponsoring Song Exploder. I took a trip to Iceland this summer. And because it was the summer, I didn't really think about dressing for the cold. Even though I was hiking and I was planning on seeing some glaciers, I thought, it's August. But then I got there and I realized I made a huge mistake. Now, though, I have a Steo Hometown Hooded Jacket. And I just wish- I'd gotten it before my trip. All of Stio's clothes are designed and tested in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, by locals who live, work, and ski in below-freezing temperatures. I'm headed back out into the cold this winter,

• 2:23Hrishikesh Hirway?

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• 2:51Hrishikesh Hirway?

  Jake Lenderman plays and records under the name MJ Lenderman. He put out his first album in 2019. In addition to his solo work, he's been a member of the band Wednesday, and he's also featured on the Waxahachie hit song, "Right Back to It." In September 2024, the fourth MJ Lenderman album came out. It's called "Manning Fireworks." The New Yorker named it "the best album of the year," and Stereogum, Rolling Stone, and Pitchfork all put it in their top 10. For this episode, I talk to Jake about one of the songs from that album, called "You Don't Know the Shape I'm In." The song itself took shape in a few different ways. Coming up, you'll hear the way the song started as a demo, and then how that got fleshed out, and then how it got rebuilt, and then how Jake completely reimagined the whole thing.

• 3:54Speaker 01

  I turned 21 February 2020. And then I had a very, like, creative and prolific COVID time.

• 4:04Speaker 01

  But once touring came back, we really started hitting it hard. And I hadn't really written much for months. And I was like, when am I gonna have two months to not do anything again? I was kind of expecting this to happen, then time kept going on and on. And I realized that's not how life really works. So I kind of got out of the groove with writing. I guess I was more disciplined when I had all that time. That's kind of where I was at when I started this song.

• 4:35Hrishikesh Hirway?

  Where was that?

• 4:36Speaker 01

  Asheville, North Carolina.

• 4:37Hrishikesh Hirway?

  Were you living on your own?

• 4:39Speaker 01

  No, I was living with Carly. It was just the two of us. And it was a really small house. I was feeling like down or something about not creating as much, but to keep some sort of creative muscle and to get some reps in and practice, listening and reacting and stuff. I would just set like a drum loop on my laptop.

• 5:06Speaker 01

  That loop on the original demo is the patterning app on my phone. It's a really nice just drum machine app.

• 5:15Speaker 01

  I liked working at night. You know, it was probably like 2:00 AM. Carly was probably asleep in the other room. And I would just kind of DI guitar into my laptop, being as quiet as possible and just kind of jam with myself. No click or anything, just played to the drum machine. There's like a guitar that comes in. It's got a little bit of phaser on it. And it's just the two high strings doing this repetitive thing.

• 5:46Speaker 01

  And so I played that to the drum machine for like 20 minutes. And then once I was done with that, just started over again with a new guitar.

• 6:02Hrishikesh Hirway?

  Was there something that you were aiming for in your head? Like, oh, today I want to make a song that has this feeling?

• 6:07Speaker 01

  Yeah, for sure. I think I really love repetition. And I made a lot of different instrumental stuff around this time. That was all very repetitive and long. And I guess the goal was maybe to get into a zone that was kind of trance-like and kind of made you forget where you are. I like music that you don't realize, like, maybe how long something is. It's like a form of meditation or something.

• 6:40Hrishikesh Hirway?

  Did you add drums on top of the drum machine?

• 6:42Speaker 01

  I did. I played a snare drum, just to snare. I only had like one mic in my house, but that snare added a lot.

• 6:51Speaker 01

  And like I said, it was partially an exercise, just like wanting to jam, but being by myself. And the way I did that was just to first take each track and go back to the beginning and play 20 minutes every time with each instrument and just try to be present and try to practice restraint and just listen to what else is going on.

• 7:15Hrishikesh Hirway?

  So if you're doing that for all of these instruments at like 20 minutes a time, you must have been there for a pretty long time.

• 7:21Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's kind of the danger of working alone is start having fun. It's five in the morning and I've tracked nine guitars.

• 7:42Hrishikesh Hirway?

  At the end of all the, recording all those instruments, what was your feeling about the thing that you had made?

• 7:48Speaker 01

  I was probably maybe a little confused. It doesn't really sound like anything else that I'd made before. And at this time, I didn't think it would be a song with lyrics or anything, or even a song. It was just a little exercise for myself. But I guess I kept listening to it and eventually I got asked to do this compilation called Through the Soil. And separately, I had lyrics that were all scattered, like nothing really together. But then I chopped it down into like a five-minute section and figured out how to sing over it. And then I ended up really liking the song.

• 8:54Hrishikesh Hirway?

  Tell me about the lyrical fragments that you had. Where did those come from?

• 8:58Speaker 01

  One of the writing exercises I kind of would practice would be just going to like a coffee shop or something and writing in 20 lines that weren't really connected to anything. So some of them came from there. I think the first lyric I probably had was about the half-mass McDonald's flag. That was something I remember seeing on like the New Jersey Turnpike on tour. It was a funny image. It was kind of sad.

• 9:26Hrishikesh Hirway?

  Were these writing exercises happening around the same time as you were doing these instrumental exercises?

• 9:31Speaker 01

  I guess so, yeah, but separately.

• 9:33Hrishikesh Hirway?

  I think it's cool that you had that kind of discipline. I think it's one thing to say, oh, I want to stay in the groove even when you don't have songs, but it's another thing to actually sit down and do that.

• 9:44Speaker 01

  Yeah, I always have to remind myself that one of the harder parts about just wanting to sit down and write is that 99% of it's going to be garbage. And I don't always have it in me to interface with that. Like even if I'm alone, like embarrassed.

• 10:04Speaker 01

  But yeah, I think the main job, not even writing, is more about clearing my brain and shutting off voices that say an idea is stupid before it comes out.

• 10:18Hrishikesh Hirway?

  I want to go back to the McDonald's flag. You said that that was one of the first things and you found it funny. Is that a quality that you're actively looking for for your songs?

• 10:28Speaker 01

  Yeah, definitely. I think it's safe to say pretty much all my songs start with something that makes me laugh. That's kind of what gets me excited.

• 10:37Hrishikesh Hirway?

  Has that always been the case?

• 10:39Speaker 01

  Not necessarily. I think that was kind of a switch that started around 2019 for me.

• 10:46Hrishikesh Hirway?

  Where do you think that came from?

• 10:48Speaker 01

  My music before that had been really serious and personal and autobiographical kind of and sad. That was kind of the one mood there.

• 11:00Hrishikesh Hirway?

  Yeah.

• 11:01Speaker 01

  And so I got pretty bored with that and learning that I can just make stuff up and I can write a song where the narrator's a bad guy or something. It opens up so many doors and humor has been a really important thing to me. I was watching the like 90s Hulk cartoon.

• 11:23Hrishikesh Hirway?

  Okay.

• 11:25Speaker 01

  And I don't know what it was about this episode. I was just cooking. Once I started watching, like, most of the lyrics came out of watching that, like, all you had to do was be nice. Because, you know, people were just bullying the Hulk and he'd get angry and start destroying things. And so like the violent side, there's like a bit of violence in this song that was inspired by the Hulk.

• 11:52Hrishikesh Hirway?

  Are there other lyrics that came from that show?

• 11:55Speaker 01

  I think the clarinet thing just got, it was, you know, maybe a scene of a guy just kind of defeated, walking in the rain with a solo clarinet.

• 12:11Speaker 01

  So the clarinet singing its lonesome duck walk is kind of a reference to literally the Hulk.

• 12:21Hrishikesh Hirway?

  As you were writing these things, what's the story of this song in your mind?

• 12:25Speaker 01

  Once I started organizing the lyrics, I realized they have something in common. It could be a friendship or a romantic relationship, but it's kind of about two people drifting.

• 12:37Hrishikesh Hirway?

  Can I ask you, like, who are they? Like, what do they look like in your mind? The people who this song's about?

• 12:43Speaker 01

  That's an interesting question.

• 12:45Hrishikesh Hirway?

  Is one of them you or a stand-in for you, you think?

• 12:48Speaker 01

  Maybe. There are definitely elements of it that are.

• 12:51Hrishikesh Hirway?

  What's the most personal part of the song for you?

• 12:54Speaker 01

  Probably the opening line. I'm just thinking about certain relationships, certain friendships. People change over time, and it's not always anybody's fault if you drift. And it doesn't require some sort of confrontation or fight or something. It just kind of happens.

• 13:14Hrishikesh Hirway?

  What do you feel when you listen to that demo now?

• 13:18Speaker 01

  I still really like it. I like the energy of it, just like the first-takeness of it. But that kind of led to problems later when I tried to redo it in the studio. I just couldn't capture it again.

• 13:31Hrishikesh Hirway?

  Coming up, Jake talks about the trap he fell into in the studio and how he got out of it.

• 13:39Hrishikesh Hirway?

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• 14:21Hrishikesh Hirway?

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• 15:03Hrishikesh Hirway?

  Just go to LinkedIn.com/songexploder. That's LinkedIn.com/songexploder. Terms and conditions apply.

• 15:13Speaker 02

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• 15:46Hrishikesh Hirway?

  So, once you put that song out on the compilation, were you still thinking about it? Like, okay, that's not the end of the story for this song?

• 15:55Speaker 01

  Yeah, I wasn't totally sure what I would do with it. But when I started working on the album that became Manning Fireworks, I went back into the studio to try to record it professionally.

• 16:07Hrishikesh Hirway?

  Was it just you again?

• 16:09Speaker 01

  Yeah, just me and Alex Farrar was engineering and co-produced the album with me.

• 16:15Speaker 01

  And this was like the first session we did. I just kind of tried to re-record the song and I just couldn't really figure it out.

• 16:25Hrishikesh Hirway?

  In what way?

• 16:26Speaker 01

  The guitar parts are really simple, but I don't think I could ever play them again because I was doing weird things with tunings that I probably never wrote down or was never able to figure out again. Like getting the same shapes and stuff be pretty impossible now.

• 16:42Hrishikesh Hirway?

  And it was like three in the morning a year earlier.

• 16:44Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly.

• 16:45Hrishikesh Hirway?

  Yeah.

• 16:46Speaker 01

  So, yeah, we got this version recorded.

• 17:12Speaker 01

  But it just didn't have the same spark to it, I guess.

• 17:22Hrishikesh Hirway?

  How long did it take for you to come to that realization that like this version wasn't working for you?

• 17:28Speaker 01

  Within the week of getting the mix back, I mean, even in the studio, I wasn't really feeling great about the music and just starting to feel some sort of imposter syndrome. Because like that was December 2022. I released both songs April that year. And randomly in December, it got really like a lot of attention. And so I was kind of distracted by people talking about it.

• 17:56Hrishikesh Hirway?

  Why would that make things harder to make more music?

• 17:59Speaker 01

  I don't know. I think it was just the attention was new and something to get used to. And so, yeah, I was doing my best to not try to make something that I would think the people who liked the album would want to hear or something. Because in reality, the reason I think people connected with the music in the first place is because I was doing what I wanted to do and being myself.

• 18:24Hrishikesh Hirway?

  You weren't being self-conscious. And now suddenly you were self-conscious about how people were responding to a moment where you weren't self-conscious.

• 18:32Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly. So, yeah, I was just doing my best to mentally get back into a place where I could just do my thing.

• 18:41Hrishikesh Hirway?

  Which it's like someone saying like, don't think of an elephant.

• 18:44Speaker 01

  Yeah. So after that session, I thought on it for a long time and just realized like, the only way to do this and make it fresh and exciting again is to just totally rebuild it. I wanted the record to be dynamic and I thought originally that maybe I needed to make songs that were heavier, louder, faster. But then I was like, what if I just go the opposite way? Acoustic, quiet. I asked my friend Landon, I knew he plays upright bass and that was gonna be the core part of the song.

• 19:23Speaker 01

  We did have a drum machine loop again.

• 19:29Speaker 01

  Alex actually played drums on top of the drum machine.

• 19:43Hrishikesh Hirway?

  Had you practiced this before you went into the studio? Like, did you at home sit with an acoustic guitar and try imagining this song in a quieter format? Like, how did you know that this was gonna be a good idea?

• 19:55Speaker 01

  I guess, I don't know if I even tried playing it by myself. I knew it would work because it was completely different. I wasn't trying to recreate something.

• 20:05Speaker 01

  And so me and Landon and Alex tracked it live, even with the vocals. We sat. And that's how it started, just that core. Under a half mast McDonald's flag.

• 20:20Speaker 01

  Broken birds tumble fast past my window.

• 20:28Speaker 01

  And you don't know the shape I'm in.

• 20:34Hrishikesh Hirway?

  What was your first reaction to what you'd just done?

• 20:38Speaker 01

  It started flipping the switch in my head about how I was feeling about the record in general. I got really excited. I remember just like, I loved how the bass sounded so much.

• 20:50Speaker 01

  And I felt like we kind of unlocked something.

• 20:54Speaker 01

  But one of the main obstacles or like challenges was like I felt like it was a little bit twee or something initially. There just needed to be some more dirt there, like it needed to be a little more unsettling or something. And that's where that slide banjo came in. That's my friend Colin. He's actually the drummer in my band, but he discovered this thing. You take a banjo, put an ebo on it and play it with a slide. The ebo just like causes the string to vibrate.

• 21:36Speaker 01

  And with the banjo, because it's got a drum head on it, there's some really interesting resonance there.

• 21:41Hrishikesh Hirway?

  Yeah, when I was listening to the stems, I was trying to figure out what the hell that was.

• 21:46Speaker 01

  It really shines through at one moment after the punching holes in the hotel room line. Punching holes. It really sticks out in a beautiful way. In a hotel room. Singing, all you had to do was be nice. And then I took some elements from the original. There's like a clean electric guitar strumming that's kind of reminiscent of the original demo. But then the funny part was the day I was going in to record, my friend Shane was walking out of a session and he was holding like a case. And I was like, what's in there?

• 22:31Speaker 01

  And he's like, a clarinet. And I was like, oh, okay. Can you come back tomorrow? Like, because I had that lyric and I was like, that might be funny if an actual clarinet responds to me singing about one. Clarinet. Singing its lonesome dark walk. So that was never really like a plan. It just, we ran into each other and that's how that happened. I love how it sounds.

• 23:16Hrishikesh Hirway?

  What are the other vocals on this song besides yours?

• 23:19Speaker 03

  And you don't know.

• 23:21Speaker 01

  That's Carly singing.

• 23:24Speaker 01

  I like the way Carly and my voice sound together. We sang a lot together, being in Wednesday. And, you know, she's been in my band at various times.

• 23:41Speaker 01

  There's like a weird noisy guitar that kind of feeds back with the wah-wah pedal.

• 23:50Hrishikesh Hirway?

  Yeah, how did you make that?

• 23:51Speaker 01

  I was in the room with like a Marshall half stack and it's like feeding back. And then just using the wah as almost a rhythmic tool. It's just on the quarter notes the whole time. I just eventually found this dissonant riff.

• 24:14Speaker 01

  I felt like the violence in this song wasn't really coming through. And I think maybe these more dissonant elements bring that out.

• 24:47Hrishikesh Hirway?

  So when you recorded the song at this volume and tempo and with this instrumentation, did it end up changing or recontextualizing the lyrics for you?

• 24:57Speaker 01

  I think so. It's a little more somber, I guess. The humor, you know, like sadness and humor are the same thing a lot of the time.

• 25:07Hrishikesh Hirway?

  How so?

• 25:08Speaker 01

  Just like what is funny is what's sad. I guess they're like, depending on how you're looking at like the McDonald's flag or like punching holes in a hotel room, like it's kind of violent and scary. But it's pathetic because then the character says, "All you had to do was be nice." And then sings this, "Whoa, whoa, whoa, be nice." It's kind of like, it's pathetic.

• 25:34Hrishikesh Hirway?

  Yeah, there's something even more pathetic about violence that's ineffectual.

• 25:39Speaker 01

  Yeah, and it's not necessarily directed at anyone, I don't think. Because part of the song is like, there's no blame anywhere. But yeah, this frustrated character doesn't know where to put that energy. Singing, all you had to do was be nice.

• 26:02Speaker 01

  Whoa, whoa, whoa, be nice to me.

• 26:12Hrishikesh Hirway?

  What about the title of this song and the refrain of "You Don't Know the Shape I'm In"?

• 26:16Speaker 01

  I'm glad you brought that up. The band has a song called "The Shape I'm In," and that's the chorus, "Oh, you don't know the shape I'm in." I just love that statement. Like, I see these two characters in the song, like, both saying that and not really fully being able to be there. I know it's common, like, or at least for me, I've dealt with this in relationships or friendships and stuff. Like, sometimes you're both in a place where you need somebody there for you, but maybe they're also, they also need that.

• 26:54Hrishikesh Hirway?

  I feel like with great songs, you can do them a lot of different ways, and they'll still be great songs. But it's also hard not to feel like sometimes one particular arrangement is, like, these are the clothes that this song should be wearing. The album version is so different from the demo. For you, did you feel like, oh, based on what the chords are and what the melody and lyrics are, this is what the song should sound like?

• 27:19Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think like the, like you said, clothes, that the album version wears feels more fitting to the overall nature of the song. But I love that both of these exist and that they're so different.

• 27:42Hrishikesh Hirway?

  And now, here's "You Don't Know the Shape I'm In" by MJ Lenderman in its entirety.

• 28:04Speaker 03

  Some say

• 28:08Speaker 03

  Distance grows the heart But I know

• 28:16Speaker 03

  Sometimes we just drift apart

• 28:21Speaker 03

  Everybody's walking in twos Leaving no was our

• 28:31Speaker 03

  It's a Sunday at the water park

• 28:51Speaker 03

  We sat

• 28:55Speaker 03

  Under a half-mast McDonald's flag

• 29:01Speaker 03

  Broken birds tumble fast past my window

• 29:08Speaker 03

  You don't know

• 29:12Speaker 03

  The shape I'm in

• 29:38Speaker 03

  Punching holes

• 29:42Speaker 03

  In a hotel room

• 29:48Speaker 03

  Singing all you had to do Was be nice

• 29:55Speaker 03

  Whoa, whoa, whoa, be nice

• 30:00Speaker 03

  To me

• 31:20Hrishikesh Hirway?

  To learn more, visit songexploder.net. You'll find links to buy or stream "You Don't Know the Shape I'm In", and you can watch the music video. There's also a link to the original version of the song that appeared on the Through the Soil compilation. This episode was produced by me, Craig Ely, Kathleen Smith, and Mary Dolan, with production assistance from Tiger Bisco. The episode artwork is by Carlos Lerma, and I made the show's theme music and logo. Song Exploder is a proud member of Radiotopia from PRX, a network of independent, listener-supported, artist-owned podcasts. You can learn more about our shows at radiotopia.fm. If you'd like to hear more from me, you can sign up for my newsletter. You can find it on the Song Exploder website.

• 32:03Hrishikesh Hirway?

  You can also follow me and Song Exploder on Instagram, and you can get a Song Exploder t-shirt at songexploder.net/shirt. I'm Rishi Kesh Hirway. Thanks for listening.