“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.
You can buy or stream “You Don’t Know The Shape I’m In” here.
Illustration by Carlos Lerma.
For a transcript of this episode, click here.
Karly Hartzman – vocals
Alex Farrar – engineer and co-producer
Landon George – upright bass
Colin Miller – slide banjo
Shane McCord – clarinet
Patterning app
The Hulk
Boat Songs
Marshall half stack
“The Shape I’m In” – The Band
“You Don’t Know The Shape I’m In” – version featured on Through The Soil II
