Posted: by The Alt Editing Staff
Americans love to demonize things–themselves, each other, events they are helpless to trace to a root cause. The best way to combat that inclination, though, is to simply sit back and observe–accept absurdity with a stifled chuckle. That’s exactly what Wednesday frontwoman Karly Hartzman is most gifted at. The 28-year-old Greensboro, NC native is eager to use her pen to string together the beautifully odd minutiae of the “born here, live here, die here” southern mentality prolifically bastardized by the bros of post-9/11 stadium country. While she does take a couple breaks to look inward, Bleeds, like its brilliant sister album Rat Saw God, is a patchwork of Hartzman’s surroundings.
Having only been indie stars of their stature for the last couple of years, Wednesday and their guitarist Jake “MJ” Lenderman have been the harbingers of a musical movement that many have a hard time coining a term for. Some opted for “Y’allternative,” which the band has openly called stupid and reductive; “alt-country” felt too broad. An embarrassingly out-of-touch GQ article claimed they (along with the likes of Cameron Winter and Waxahatchee) were the modern faces of “dad rock.” The Spotify playlist that dons Hartzman and co. as covergirls is titled “Indie Twang,” with the description “clocking in for elderberry wine summer.” Every suit is trying to pin them down because it’s become clear that Wednesday has something undeniable and irreplicable. If forced to assign a term to Wednesday, though, I’d opt to pull from the username of the band’s most prolific fan/meme account, countrygaze(d). An apt portmanteau of country and shoegaze, the band equally pull from the storytelling of Drive-By Truckers as they do the rich, textured guitar tones of seminal shoegaze revival bands like TAGABOW and Hotline TNT (who are longtime friends and previous tour openers of Wednesday).
Many are quick to forget Wednesday’s noisier beginnings (best exemplified on sophomore LP Twin Plagues) and potentially noisier future upon being swooned by the vibrant sweetness of lead single “Elderberry Wine.” “Wasp,” a straight hardcore killer, ushers in Bleeds’ final act. Parsed through her piercing screams are heartbreaking proclamations of self-scrutiny: “My life is a spider web built into the doorway / When you walk in you duck your head and the wind is always blowing.” It’s the heaviest track in their discography thus far, and Hartzman has hinted towards her desire for the next record to follow in its stylings. In a striking contrast, “Wasp” is preceded by the record’s tender, emotional centerpiece, “The Way Love Goes.” Hartzman and Lenderman ended their six-year romantic relationship just a week before recording the record, but all the songs were written far prior (with “Phish Pepsi” being a retread of a track from the duo’s 2021 EP Guttering). Cries of a relationship on the rocks inhabit “The Way Love Goes,” showcasing Hartzman at her most vulnerable. “I oversold myself on the night we met / Not as entertaining as you might have thought I was then,” she croons atop a clean, fingerpicked electric guitar. Xandy Chelmis’ lap steel mourns alongside her for the rest of the song. “I know it’s not been easy / and I know it can’t always be / and that’s the way love goes,” she concludes with a shrug.
Bleeds sees Hartzman become a vocal powerhouse in real time. Her deliveries are more impassioned than ever, testing the limits of her already distinctly dynamic range–it only helps that those home-run vocal performances are used to deliver some of the most infectious hooks of the year. The chorus of “Elderberry Wine” has been stuck in my head since its May release, and my voice has already cracked countless times trying to sing along to “Wound Up Here (By Holdin’ On).” Take “Townies,” a song Hartzman describes as the spiritual successor to Rat Saw God highlight “Chosen to Deserve.” It was written in the wake of Hartzman moving back to her hometown of Greensboro from Asheville and reuniting with the survivor of the Benadryl overdose chronicled on “Chosen to Deserve.” She sings fondly of her memories of high school deviance, singing of gossip like she’s in the passenger seat of your car: “You sent my nudes around / I never yelled at you about it ‘cuz you died,” she sings with the final word extended into the record’s sneakiest earworm. The stories are so enthralling but delivered so naturally that you run a red and choke on your McDonald’s Sprite without a second thought.
The way that Hartzman portrays the south is a carefully curated collage of the good, the bad, and the ugly. In her lyrics, she is truthful and wholly unpretentious, evoking urinating puppies, live-streamed funerals, and Afrin-fueled knife fights. She humanizes the people often discarded and overlooked by coastal elites that can’t get themselves to think with any amount of nuance. Bleeds exemplifies that southern life is an experience that cannot be done justice through simple autobiography, as taught by both country’s forefathers and Hartzman herself today.
Disappointing / Average / Good / Great / Phenomenal
Bleeds is out now.
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Leah Weinstein | @leahetc_
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