Live at Third Man Records

Live at Third Man Records captures Karly Hartzman and MJ Lenderman in a moment that should feel electric: two of indie rock’s most distinctive voices playing an intimate show in Nashville’s Blue Room just weeks after the breakout success of Manning Fireworks. Instead, the recording exposes the limits of stripping their songs to the bone. Gone are the textures that animate both Wednesday and Lenderman’s solo work—no crushing guitars, pedal steel sighs, or rumbling drums. What’s left is stark, slow, and too often drained of the momentum their songwriting thrives on.

A telling moment comes mid-performance during “Wristwatch,” when an eager fan tries to belt along to the “Himbo Dome” line. The Scully lathe captures their attempt, but the swell never comes; the song just sits there, anticlimactic, leaving the fan’s enthusiasm to taper off in embarrassment. That deflated feeling mirrors the set as a whole. While there are flashes of ragged beauty—tangled guitars on “She’s Leaving You,” chaotic harmonies on “TLC Cage Match,” Hartzman’s wry bite in “Feast of Snakes”—most songs move at the same sluggish pace, bleeding energy as they go.

Their setlist spans deep cuts, early tracks, and selections from Manning Fireworks and Rat Saw God, giving the record the feel of a clearing-house or even a capstone. But that unintended sense of finality can’t be separated from the context looming over the performance: Hartzman and Lenderman had ended their six-year relationship just months before, a breakup later revealed publicly during Lenderman’s press cycle. Their onstage dynamic is reserved, almost overly careful—as if both are newly aware of being perceived. Hartzman even jokes she’ll “talk a lot more when I know it’s not going to be permanent,” hinting that the unrecorded set that followed was the one where their guard finally dropped.

Ultimately, Live at Third Man Records doesn’t fail because it withholds gossip; it falters because the stripped-down arrangements never find a compelling new shape. The album captures two brilliant songwriters at a moment of personal and professional upheaval—but instead of catharsis, we get a document of restraint, hesitance, and emotional weight left unspoken. The real magic, it seems, happened after the tape stopped rolling.