Wristwatch

A pickup truck loaded with basketballs and inflatable pool toys drives toward a low overpass. It hits. It backs up, tries again, and hits again. That image, from the music video for "Wristwatch," is the quickest way into one of MJ Lenderman's most beloved songs.^[6] It is funny, a little stupid, and strangely moving, which is a decent summary of the whole record it comes from.

"Wristwatch" is not a song that explains itself. It is a rough, loping country-rock number that sounds like it was built to be shouted along to in a parking lot. Underneath, it is about the old human habit of pushing harder at something that will not move.

Where the song comes from

Lenderman was born in 1999 and grew up in Asheville, North Carolina, in a family of musicians.^[2] By the time "Wristwatch" arrived he was best known as a guitarist in the band Wednesday, whose albums had made him a fixture of the American indie scene, while his own solo records circulated as a kind of well-kept secret.^[2]

"Wristwatch" appeared on September 4, 2024, as the third single from Manning Fireworks, his fourth solo album, released two days later on Anti- and Epitaph.^[3] The record was made at Drop of Sun Studios in Asheville and produced by Lenderman with Alex Farrar, with Wednesday bandmates among the contributors. Xandy Chelmis plays pedal steel on this track.^[3]

The album met with near-universal praise. Pitchfork gave it Best New Music status with an 8.7, and it landed near the top of several 2024 year-end lists.^[3] Stereogum went further when the single dropped, suggesting "Wristwatch" might be the most quotable song Lenderman had released, and it has since become his most-streamed track.^[1]

Effort that goes nowhere

The clearest statement about what the song is for comes from Lance Bangs, who directed its video. He described a recurring idea in Lenderman's writing: characters caught in persistence without progress.^[4] He also said "Wristwatch" was the song he returned to most while working.^[1]

That phrase is worth sitting with. Persistence is normally a virtue. The song treats it as something closer to a compulsion, a way of staying busy while the real problem stays exactly where it was. The narrator is not lazy. He is trying. The trying is the trap.

This is a comic idea and a sad one at once, and Lenderman has always worked in the space where those two overlap. A press description of the album put it as frank observations on the intersection of wit and sadness.^[3] "Wristwatch" may be the purest example, because the jokes never undercut the ache. They carry it.

The watch as an object

A wristwatch is an odd thing to build a song around. It is a tool for tracking time, a status symbol, and, for many people, an inherited or gifted object that stands in for a relationship. Whatever specific meaning a listener attaches to it, it is a device that insists on the passing of time while doing nothing to slow it down.

That gives the title a quiet irony. The song is full of small, concrete, slightly deflated detail, the sort of material possessions and passing habits that Lenderman's narrators cling to in place of anything harder to name. Some listeners hear those objects as stand-ins for loneliness. The ticking of the watch is the soundtrack for a person who knows time is moving and cannot seem to move with it.

Lenderman's songs often hold a narrator at arm's length, close enough to feel for and far enough away to laugh at. One critic described the album as a study in thwarted masculinity, and that framing fits here.^[3] The narrator keeps performing competence, keeps reaching for the next gesture, and keeps being surprised by the result.

The sound of stubbornness

The music does a lot of the interpretive work. One writer called the track rugged, noting the high, lonesome vocal, the serrated guitar tone and the general raggedness that invites Neil Young comparisons.^[5] That looseness matters. The arrangement never sounds polished enough to suggest the narrator has it figured out.

Chelmis's pedal steel adds a layer of country sorrow that the guitars then roughen back up.^[3] The effect is a song that sounds like it is trying very hard and not quite getting there, which is exactly its subject. Form and content line up without anyone announcing it.

There is also a sense of release in the performance. Lenderman does not sing like someone wallowing. He sings like someone who has decided that if the situation is going to be absurd, he may as well commit. That gives the track its warmth.

The bridge in Durham

The video makes the metaphor literal. Lenderman is shown driving a pickup, packed with basketballs and inflatable pool rafts, into an overpass over and over, with members of his band appearing along the way.^[6] The concept was based on a real low-clearance railroad bridge in Durham, North Carolina, known as the Canopener, a structure famous for stripping the roofs off trucks that misjudge its height.^[1][6]

It is a perfect image for the song's logic. The driver is not ignorant. Everyone knows the bridge is there. The truck is just too tall, and the driver tries again anyway. Bangs shot it in golden-hour light, which makes the repetition feel less like a disaster and more like a ritual.^[1]

The video also rewards a second reading. The truck is full of leisure items (balls, floats), the gear of fun, and the collisions turn them into debris. Pleasure is carried toward an obstacle and destroyed by it. You can read that as a joke about stubbornness, or as a small portrait of how anyone loaded up with good intentions can still run into a wall.

Other ways to hear it

Not everyone will hear a song about futility. Because the lyrics are so full of specific, offhand observation, some listeners take "Wristwatch" as a portrait of a particular relationship, with the narrator's fixation on small things standing in for a larger loss he cannot address directly. That reading is compatible with the persistence theme, since avoidance is just another way of repeating the same motion.

Others hear it more generously, as a song about endurance. On that view, hitting the bridge again is not foolish but brave. The narrator keeps showing up, keeps loading the truck, and keeps believing the next attempt might clear the gap. The song never confirms either reading, and that refusal is part of its charm.

Lenderman has not offered a line-by-line account of the song in the interviews and coverage I could find, so these are readings rather than confirmations. That openness suits a writer who prefers the punchline and the wound to arrive in the same breath.

Why it resonates

Part of the appeal is simply that "Wristwatch" sounds great. It has the sort of hook that lodges itself for days, and it was strong enough to carry Lenderman through his solo debut on late-night television.^[1] But the staying power comes from recognition. Most people have a bridge they keep driving into: a habit, a job, a person, a plan.

The song also arrived at a moment when Lenderman's reputation was climbing quickly. Manning Fireworks gave him his broadest audience, and "Wristwatch" became the track that many newcomers heard first.^[1][3] It offers an accessible door into his world of rueful humor, big guitars and unglamorous American detail.

What distinguishes it from a lot of sad-funny songwriting is its affection. It never sneers at its narrator. The joke is on all of us, and the song is kind enough to include itself.

Where it sits on the album

Manning Fireworks runs nine tracks and just under thirty-nine minutes, and every song on it was written by Lenderman.^[3] Critics tended to hear a writer holding onto his sense of humor while letting more sincerity in. Pitchfork's review called the record witty and sincere, the mark of a songwriter finding his voice.^[2]

"Wristwatch" sits at the center of that shift. It keeps the shaggy guitar and the dry delivery of his earlier work, but the laughs are doing sadder work than they used to. Placed fourth in the sequence, it works as a hinge between the album's louder, jokier moments and its more exposed ones.

It also shows how Lenderman uses place. The record was made in his hometown of Asheville, and the video was shot in Durham, so the song carries a North Carolina specificity without ever needing to say so.^[1][3] The details feel local even when the feeling is universal, which is a hard trick and one of the reasons his songs travel.

Conclusion

"Wristwatch" is a song about time, effort and the gap between them. It asks what happens when persistence stops being a strength and becomes a habit, and it answers with a shrug, a grin and a very loud guitar.

The truck backs up. The driver adjusts the mirror. The bridge has not moved. There is something deeply human in that moment, and Lenderman has found a way to make it both hilarious and heartbreaking in under four minutes.