Album of the Week: Wednesday – Bleeds Staff Review

 

‘Bleeds is the sixth studio record from Asheville, North Carolina indie-rock band Wednesday. The follow-up to 2023’s Rat Saw God is another triumph from the Karly Hartzman–led quartet, with the preternaturally talented MJ Lenderman once again in the mix as a studio member. This album pretty much picks up where Rat Saw God left off with riffs that are massive, vocals that are mesmeric, unpredictable and passionate, and songs that wander comfortably between southern rock, country rock, slacker-y ’90s indie, and the blown-out bliss of shoegaze.

 

Reality TV Argument Bleeds opens with a whirr of feedback, guitar notes feeling their way out of the fog before bursting into the main hook. It’s a track built on quiet-loud dynamics where verses that are restrained and intimate, choruses that come back with blown-out overdrive. Think Billy Corgan on one shoulder, J Mascis on the other, as the song plants itself right on the dramatic, gritty edge of the ethereal. Townies takes things down a notch, leaning into country territory with Xandy Chelmis’ lap steel shining bright and Hartzman’s gripping, stream-of-consciousness verses giving way to a wordless, howling chorus.

 

What stands out most about Bleeds is how it’s both a sibling to Rat Saw God, and also a step in another direction. Where that record may have occasionally edged toward pop, Bleeds feels less interested in catchiness and more intent on following its own crooked path. In that way it has more in common with 2020’s I Was Trying to Describe You to Someone, a reminder that Wednesday are at their best when they feel like outsiders, a band on the margins doing their own thing. For me, they’re the most interesting American indie-rock group since Pavement, not just because of the sonics but because of the way the songs revel in a certain smallness. The funny, the inconsequential, the mundane. Like Pavement, but with a different charge, where Malkmus may have shrugged ironically, Hartzman revels in the detachment.

 

When they do edge closer to accessibility, it feels more natural than before. Pre-release singles Wound Up Here (By Holdin On) and Elderberry Wine prove as much. The former features some of Lenderman’s most fiery guitar work on a Wednesday record, and across Bleeds he gives both ferocity and tenderness depending on what Hartzman’s voice demands. Still, make no mistake, this is Hartzman’s record, her unpredictable vocal delivery keeps the album riveting, while her lyrical rag-picking of life’s scraps and fragments often uncover the memorable in the mundane. Choice couplets that jump out on first listen include: “Weeds grew into the springs of the trampoline / You saw a pitbull puppy pissin' off a balcony” on Wound Up Here (By Holdin On), “Thought you'd get shipped home in a full-body cast / Never could get your head out of your ass” from Pick Up That Knife, and “Potpourri dead smell of a stagnant creek / 'Cause you ran your car into a cherry blossom tree” in Bitter Everyday. The whole album is littered with these vivid, core-memory snapshots.

 

Musically, Wednesday sound entirely at home within Bleeds’ patchwork of influences. They refuse stasis, moving restlessly between forms as Phish Pepsi and Pick Up That Knife lean into pure country-rock, Wasp sparks, and explodes with ferocious punk energy and penultimate track Carolina Murder Suicide sinks into one of the bleakest and most beautiful passages Hartzman has ever written, its hushed percussion, ghostly organ, and drifting guitar conjuring a chillingly intimate soundscape.

 

Restless and constantly fascinating, Bleeds is proof that Wednesday have carved out their own corner of indie-rock as outlaws, misfits, whatever you want to call them, but always themselves.’

 

 

Can a self-portrait be a collage? Can empathy be autobiographical? What’s the point of living if we’re not trying to understand all the horror and humor that surrounds everything? These are a few of the questions lurking under the bleachers of Wednesday’s new album Bleeds, an intoxicating collection of narrative-heavy Southern rock that—like many of the most arresting passages from the North Carolina band’s highlight reel so far—thoughtfully explores the vivid link between curiosity and confession. Bleeds is not only the best Wednesday record—it’s also the most Wednesday record, a patchwork-style triumph of literary allusions and outlaw grit, of place-based poetry and hair-raising noise. Karly Hartzman—founder, frontwoman, and primary lyricist—credits Wednesday’s tightened grasp on their own identity to time spent collaborating on previous albums, plus a tour schedule that’s been both rewarding and relentless. “Bleeds is the spiritual successor to Rat Saw God, and I think the quintessential ‘Wednesday Creek Rock’ album,” Hartzman said, articulating satisfaction with the ways her band has sharpened its trademark sound, how they’ve refined the formula that makes them one of the most interesting rock bands of their generation. “This is what Wednesday songs are supposed to sound like,” she said. “We’ve devoted a lot of our lives to figuring this out—and I feel like we did.” Just like Rat Saw God, one of the defining rock & roll records of the 2020s so far, Bleeds came together at Drop of Sun in Asheville and was produced by Alex Farrar, who’s been recording the band since Twin Plagues. Hartzman again brought demos to the studio, where she and her bandmates—Xandy Chelmis (lap steel, pedal steel), Alan Miller (drums), Ethan Baechtold (bass, piano), and Jake “M.J.” Lenderman (guitar)—worked as a team to bulk-up the compositions with the exact right amounts of country truth-telling, indie-pop hooks, and noisy sludge. More than ever, the precise proportions were steered by the lyricism—not only its tone or subject matter, but also the actual sound of the words, as well as Hartzman’s masterfully subjective approach to detail selection. Every image or scene is filtered through Hartzman’s agile, writerly brain. The particulars deemed essential all contain revelations about Hartzman’s specific obsessions and vulnerabilities, about the fragmented way she processes the world. Maybe sometimes the best way to locate truth or pain or dignity within your own life story, Bleeds suggests, is by crawling into someone else’s.