“This is, like, our 15th time in New York,” MJ Lenderman told the crowd at Brooklyn’s Kings Theatre on Thursday night. That’s only a slight exaggeration. This time last year, the North Carolina guitarist kicked off three nights at the 650-capacity Music Hall of Williamsburg in support of his breakthrough solo album, Manning Fireworks. He’s returned to New York multiple times since then with his backing band, the Wind, playing increasingly bigger venues each time as he quickly became everyone’s new favorite indie rock hero. Last night, the 3,250-capacity Brooklyn theater marked the final stop on his lengthy tour — and he was ready to party. “We are celebrating!” the 26-year-old told the audience.
Thursday night also marked the last stop on Rolling Stone’s Gather No Moss showcase, a multi-city rock & roll tour, sponsored by ~Pourri and iHeartRadio, that rolled through Denver (featuring Mk.gee as the headliner), Chicago (The Beaches), and Nashville (Wet Leg) earlier this year. It was only fitting that Gather No Moss concluded in the beautifully restored, 96-year-old Kings Theatre, with its ornate ceilings, proscenium arch, and stage that has hosted countless legends, from Diana Ross to Pavement. (If concerts aren’t your thing, you can catch a 40th anniversary screening of Clue there next month.)
The evening began with an opening set by Nashville singer-songwriter Annie DiRusso, who grew up an hour north of here, in Croton-on-Hudson. “It’s a vibe in here!” she said excitedly, tearing through excellent cuts from her recent album, Super Pedestrian. When someone in the crowd yelled, “Who are you?” she casually replied, “OK, who am I? My name’s Annie. A lot of people would say I’m pretty chill.” Her songs were just as chill, whether she was delivering rockers about hot hookups (“Legs”) or letdowns (“Back in Town”). Before playing the searing “I Am the Deer,” she said, “I wrote this next one about… if I were to repeatedly run myself over with a car.” A vibe in here, indeed.
The indie pop duo Hovvdy took the stage next, pumping up the crowd for the headliner: “Fuckin’ MJ Lenderman! How ‘bout that?” The Austin, Texas band, made up of Charlie Martin and Will Taylor, played gems from their 2024 self-titled album, including “Heartstring” and “Jean.” They also dug into 2021’s True Love (the delicate “Blindsided,” the highlight “Junior Day League”), an album that boygenius have cited as an inspiration. Hovvdy concluded their set with the title track from that LP, now nearly five years old. “Do you believe what I said?” they sang. “That I’m the man I say I am?”
Hovvdy performed before Lenderman took the stage
Jenna Murray for Rolling Stone
By the time Lenderman took the stage around 9:30 p.m., the general admission floor was jam-packed with fans, all of them excited for a chance to stand close to the pyre, manning fireworks. He opened with the wry, downcast song that gave his most recent album its name (“You’ve been betting on horses called Johnny-Come-Lately/You’ve been high on the hog, and the dogs seem to hate you”), then threw everyone a major curveball by playing his much-celebrated cover of This Is Lorelei’s “Dancing in the Club.” Lenderman’s version of that song was one of 2025’s peak moments in rock, one brilliant indie songwriter tipping his cap to another, and we were hoping he’d perform it at some point during his set. Seeing him make it the second song immediately set the tone for the rest of the evening: This was going to rule.
We were in for several surprises. Lenderman noted that for all the times he and the Wind have performed in New York on this tour, they’d never played “Sacrifice (For Love)” in the city until tonight. It’s a cover of a 1991 song by Greg Sage, frontman of influential Pacific Northwest punk act the Wipers; Lenderman first sang it on a 2021 EP with the band Wednesday (they reissued it last summer). He went on to contribute to Wednesday up through their fantastic new album, Bleeds, though he won’t be touring with that band when they kick off their tour this week. This take on “Sacrifice (For Love)” was the closest we’ll get to hearing him perform any Wednesday material for some time.
He then sank into the sadness of “Pick Up the Pieces,” a gut-punch of a new song he’s been performing on tour since August. “It wasn’t love, you were just dumb enough/To call me an angel,” he sang across Trevor Nikrant’s pedal steel. “Meanwhile, I’m here, taking/Gas station drugs for all things painful.” It was a remarkable moment that proved that there’s a lot more where Manning Fireworks came from, and Lenderman is just getting started.
When you release a no-skips album packed with instantly quotable lines and riffs that make fans play embarrassing air guitar when they hear them (it’s us, we’re fans), it’s almost impossible to have a boring concert moment. Lenderman and his band — Nikrant, guitarist and fiddle player Landon George, drummer Colin Miller, guitarist Jon Samuels — delivered nonstop Manning Fireworks magic for the rest of the night, from an emotional “Rip Torn” to a downright euphoric “Bark at the Moon.” No matter how many times he’s played New York, fans will always lose their minds during the latter, particularly when he sings, “Don’t move to New York City, babe, it’s gonna change the way you dress.”
During the encore, George returned onstage to speak to the audience. “Put that spotlight on me, I got some stuff to tell you,” the fiddle man told the lighting crew. “Make it sexy!” He urged New Yorkers to vote for Democratic candidate Zohran Mamdani in the upcoming mayoral race, early voting for which begins on Oct. 25. Mamdani spoke at Lenderman’s first of three Brooklyn Steel shows last spring, and he recently appeared onstage with Lucy Dacus at All Things Go 2025. “You better get out and vote for Zohran!” George continued. “I wish that we had a Zohran down in the South, where I live!”
Lenderman & Co. got back onstage for a raucous encore of “Knockin,’” from his 2023 live album And the Wind (Live and Loose!). It’s the perfect set closer, giving the band a chance to let loose and Lenderman an opportunity to really go for it when he howls about how he’s “knock, knock, knock, knockin’ on heaven’s door tonight!” At Kings Theatre, as thousands of rock fans sang along, we were right there with him.
