Wednesday – Bleeds
On their latest album, Bleeds, Wednesday find their sweet spot
Karly Hartzman’s knack for the ragged and abrasive on Wednesday's new album Bleeds busts this band through a hole in the ‘indie country’ boom bucket. Of course, Wednesday have never fit neatly into the confines of that scene, though they will remain constantly in its orbit. But even when they nail a sugar-coated country song, as they do so convincingly on Elderberry Wine, it still has a sour centre.
Instead, Bleeds is an alt-rock urtext for Wednesday, both an entry point and a summation of their gifts: mixing the atonal with the blissful (Wound Up Here (By Holdin On)), bizarro choogle (Phish Pepsi), void-splitting hardcore (Wasp) and Low-esque slowcore (Carolina Murder Suicide). At that sour centre is Hartzman, the constant, like the protagonist of Denis Johnson’s Jesus’ Son collection – not always the main character, but a guide to the moments she lets us in on.
Often, as on Townies, she does this with the perfect punchline to a scene of real world horror: 'You sent my nudes around / I never yelled at you about it cause you… died'. Hartzman’s voice is a weapon, and here she draws that one word out into a multisyllabic chorus. It’s catharsis, levity, and pinning you down in the darkness, all at once. For most, that’s an uncomfortable place to be; it’s Wednesday’s sweet spot.
Listen to: Wound Up Here (By Holdin On), Candy Breath, The Way Love Goes