Wednesday – Bleeds
Wednesday are a band that actively draws listeners closer, even though they’ll need earplugs. On “Hot Rotten Grass Smell,” the leadoff track from the North Carolina group’s 2023 album Rat Saw God, a peal of distortion cuts through a tense opening arpeggio in just a matter of seconds, providing a bombastic backdrop for a series of disparate images of a Southern small town with a darkness seeping in: “Your closet froze after you left/Except the people who took your shirts/Closed off your door with yellow tape.” Even its most vulnerable moment, the unloaded baggage inventory of “Chosen to Deserve,” came not with the gentle plucks of a singer/songwriter but via a series of roaring country-rock riffs, putting greater emphasis on the source of the record’s magic, establishing a sense of place with three-dimensional characters without sacrificing the pure exhilaration of a revved up rock song.
The group’s sixth album Bleeds, as evident by the thunderous opening roar of “Reality TV Argument Bleeds,” still spares precious little space for songs with their rough edges sanded off or acidic potency watered down. But Wednesday don’t shy away from a touch of sweetness either, further honing their melodic prowess while Karly Hartzman delivers some of the best vocal performances of her career, not the least of which takes place in first single “Elderberry Wine,” a gorgeous country-rock meditation on toxicity borne from personal fulfillment. When she sings, “…But everybody gets along just fine,” what sounds at first like a meditation on an easy-going-but-good-thing soon seemingly drips with an acknowledgement that it’s probably doomed.
Wednesday are at peak confidence and command over their songwriting even amid Hartzman’s lyrical ensemble cast of characters still going nowhere as fast as ever. “This is what Wednesday songs are supposed to sound like,” Hartzman said in a statement, and it’s hard to find any reason to disagree, with some of the band’s brightest melodies crashing up against poetically unglamorous images like that of a dead body found in a creek in the gloriously ragged “Wound Up Here (By Holdin On)”. Hartzman tries a little tenderness on the more intimate ballad “The Way Love Goes,” offering the sweetly hesitant lines, “Knockin’ on that screen door, even though I can see right through/Feel like I’m almost good enough to know you” before the introduction of Xandy Chelmis’ pedal steel allows its heart to grow a few sizes larger. Charming though these softer moments can be, the most thrilling are the absolute belters; on the spectacular “Townies,” capping her memories of slut-shamed friends and dead acquaintances, Hartzman soars in stretching a single word (“died,” “down,” etc.) into an endless number of syllables.
Bleeds harbors some of Wednesday’s most delightfully weird side quests, not the least of which is “Phish Pepsi.” At its core, it’s not necessarily much more than an account of two friends reuniting and getting high, watching a Phish concert and Human Centipede back to back. Great start, right? Add to it a bouncy Southern rock boogie, observations of uniquely surreal modern ephemera like “last time I saw you was a live stream of a funeral,” and all trace of the mundane seems to disappear. The band make the country-bluegrass transformation complete with the pickin’-and-shufflin’ “Gary’s II,” as Hartzman relays a story about a 33-year-old with dentures: “I always did wonder how your teeth stayed so nice when the only thing you drink is Pepsi.” And though it’s nearly impossible to tell what Hartzman is screaming through a layer of distortion on the 90-second punk rock tantrum “Wasp,” it’s still fun as hell anyway.
There’s good reason it’s called Bleeds—the body count continues to build after we’re introduced to the drowning victim in “Wound Up Here.” Hartzman gently observes a neighborhood tragedy over a beautiful slowcore arrangement on “Carolina Murder Suicide,” and a serenading Juggalo shows up on a wanted poster for murder on “Bitter Everyday.” But it’s in the chorus of the latter where Hartzman feels a twinge from a wound that never heals: “You get past the cold spot in the lake/The easy things keep getting harder every day.” Our hearts break, we lose our friends, we lose our teeth, and we do what we can to get by. Maybe it never gets easier, but the right guitar riff can go a long way in taking the edge off.
Label: Dead Oceans
Year: 2025
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Wednesday : Bleeds
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