Wednesday Bleeds
Last week, Wednesday played a scorching showcase set at The Basement East in Nashville, full of shredding, screaming, moshing and crowd surfing. Before playing the quieter (by their standards) summer-perfect single “Elderberry Wine,” frontwoman Karly Hartzman quipped that the song would “make sense why we’re playing AmericanaFest.” While that might’ve clued in the fans left over from Craig Finn’s gorgeous acoustic set (coincidentally, his first AFest), anyone who’s paid attention the past few years knows that the North Carolina band, whether they mean to or not, is leading this wave of indie country with Hartzman’s disenchanted exurban-based songs and Xandy Chelmis’ wandering pedal steel, with more than a few ventures into punk and hard rock. The band’s new album, Bleeds, features both Hartzman’s best storytelling and most vivid characters. Even when the twang is not at the forefront, their reverence for both the singers and yarnspinning traditions of country music has never been more evident.
To get the gossip out of the way (because that’s the kind of year it’s been in the Americana world), MJ Lenderman was a full part of recording Bleeds but no longer tours with the band, and the other members of Wednesday didn’t know that Hartzman and Lenderman had broken up until after the album was recorded. Pretty benign stuff, especially since the pair has made (musical) appearances in each other’s live performances this year, but one interesting point – the songs were written before the romantic relationship ended, which makes the seemingly breakup-induced melancholy all the more interesting. The 70s country gold-ishness of “Elderberry Wine,” with all its talk of stuck emergency brakes and dive bar “pink boiled eggs…afloat in the brine,” also contains the almost mournful couplet “Say I wanna have your baby/’Cause I freckle and you tan.” Even sweeter (and sadder, and twangy-er) is “The Way Love Goes,” which gives credit to the song “That’s The Way Love Goes” by Lefty Frizzell and Sanger D. Shafer (those country bona fides shine through again), but, tonally, is wholly a Hartzman creation – “Oversold myself/On the night we met/I’m not as entertaining/As you might’ve thought I was then.” That’s projecting some pretty serious future sadness.
The origin of Wednesday, before everything blew up so big, was a project begun by Hartzman, and happily (for us, anyway), it remains in her detail-oriented hands. “Reality TV Argument Bleeds” begins the album with a squall of guitars and a plea for a moment alone – “Walk over the wet boards of a wooden bridge/When I don’t feel like bein’ comforted.” “Townies” and “Wound Up Here (By Holdin’ On)” tell tales, from different perspectives, of people who never, ever, EVER leave their hometowns – in “Townies” specifically, even though she’s toured the world, Hartzman can’t help but check in on the local drama – “I’ll catch up when/Up when I’m/Around.” The chatter is less comical in the piano-led “Carolina Murder Suicide,” when staying home means having to deal with the worst of memories – “I wondered if grief could break you in half/When the gossip died.” Finally, “Gary’s II” is a fantastical (and apparently, like “Carolina Murder Suicide,” true) story of how Hartzman’s former landlord got dentures long before hitting middle age – “And he noticed he mistook, you got hit on behalf/Of some bastard from the bar who had slept with his wife.” There are laughs in Hartzman’s telling of the story, but we also get that these are real folks in these songs. Getting back to Craig Finn – he said during his set that Wednesday is “one of my favorite bands.” While Finn and Hartzman go about their crafts quite differently, they share an affection for characters that many might call “losers.” But they both treat their human oddballs and idiosyncratic locales in their songs as living, breathing organisms worthy of having their stories told.
Song I Can’t Wait to Hear Live: “Phish Pepsi” – This is a bit of a cheat – I got to hear Hartzman perform it at her solo set at Grimey’s New and Preloved music – but this Southern rocker, an update on an older tune, contains maybe my favorite line of the year: “We watched a Phish concert and Human Centipede/Two things I now wish I had never seen.”
Bleeds was produced by, mixed and engineered by Alex Farrar and mastered by Huntley Miller. All songs written by Karly Hartzman, Ethan Baechtold, Mark Jacob Lenderman, Richard Miller and Alexander Reuben (“The Way Love Goes” also credits Lefty Frizell and Sanger D. Shafer). Wednesday is Hartzman (vocals, guitar), Lenderman (guitar, back-up vocals), Baechtold (bass, piano), Xandy Chelmis (lap steel, pedal steel, back-up vocals) and Allen Miller (drums).
Go here to order Bleeds (out September 19): https://www.wednesday.band/merch
Check out tour dates here: https://www.wednesday.band/tourdatez
