Wednesday sing ragged tributes to delinquency, paeans to bad choices made with only mild later regret. Frontwoman and songwriter Karly Hartzman commandingly presides over a sinewy collection of ten songs, her voice running the gamut from a whisper to a scream.
The Asheville, North Carolina outfit is having its well-deserved moment spurred by this new release, its third full-length (plus last year’s excellent album of covers that included a rendition of Drive By Truckers’ ‘Women Without Whiskey’ better than their heroes’ original.) This band is generating a lot of buzz in what has been (to my ears anyway) a quiet year so far.
If we are slapping labels on its music, Wednesday plays country rock, a distinctly American idiom that usually sets my teeth on edge, often being the sonic equivalent of a pissing Calvin sans Hobbes sticker on a performatively muddy Dodge Ram truck. If you are reading this in the U.K., you might not know what I’m talking about. Consider yourself lucky.
Wednesday filters this genre through its own grungy sensibilities. Yeah, there is lap steel, expertly played, the instrument that cries “country,” but it has been slumming with its city cousins. The siren guitar on ‘Bull Believer’ is straight out of the Pixies’ ‘Dead.’ (More on that song in a bit.) The lap steel is part of a three guitar onslaught including Ms. Hartzman’s rhythm and her boyfriend Jake Lenderman’s lead that can make an unholy but tuneful racket. (Jake Lenderman records separately under the moniker MJ Lenderman and his 2022 album Boat Songs is a gem. This band has loads of talent.)
The wonderfully titled ‘Hot Rotten Grass Smell’ opens the album with a blast of sound that is over too soon in one and a half minutes. This is followed by the epic ‘Bull Believer,’ over 8 minutes long, that ends with two minutes of Hartzman completely losing her shit at a New Year’s party as her nose bleeds and her boyfriend is preoccupied with Mortal Kombat. Don’t play this one at your hoedown unless you want your ginghamed guests seeking shelter or the exits. It is a phenomenal song that is closer to Mannequin Pussy in both its quiet and unhinged moments than any country act I can think of. (Let’s make a Mannequin Pussy/Wednesday double bill happen, please.)
Hartzman writes with honesty, authenticity, and an ear for a tune. ‘Chosen to Deserve’ should be, if there were any justice, a crossover top 40 hit, blasting at every Nashville bachelorette party. The confessional lyrics however, might not be radio friendly what with the drug overdoses, habitual drunken hooky, outdoor urination and “If you’re lookin’ for me I’m in the back of an SUV/Doin’ it in some cul-de-sac underneath a dogwood tree.’ This song is a come-clean for her bandmate and romantic interest Lenderman, but it works, too, as an apologia with no apologies (you not only deserve this, you were chosen for it) directed to her parents, an alternative reading the song’s sweet video supports. The teenage years might not have been easy, Mr. and Mrs. Hartzman, but you did good.
It is going to be difficult for any album this year to match the three- song stretch that anchors the middle of the album–‘Chosen to Deserve,’ ‘Bath County’ and ‘Quarry’—each one with a rousing sing-alongable chorus and vivid stories of Dollywood, Narcan doses administered in parking lots, lice-haired kids in baby pools, newspaper wrapped cocaine in the drywall. Flannery O’Connor you can dance to or at least tap your foot on the bar rail. Hartzman has a “there-but-for-the-grace-of-god” empathy for her subjects. She deftly dodges caricature and pathos. It’s just life; it’s grubby and ugly but goofy as hell and she’s surviving it, too.
When not spilling her guts or spinning tales, Hartzmann is a keen observer of herself and her boyfriend, bandmates, and surroundings. She is quite good at evoking an image or feeling with a spare lyric as in the tender, but ambivalent love song ‘Formula One’ (‘I like sleepin’ with the lights on/You next to me watching Formula One’) and the edgy, feedback -tinged road song that closes the album, ‘TV in the Gas Pump’ (‘Swingset in a big fuckin’ field’).
It’s cause for celebration when a young band comes into its own. Wednesday is the real deal musically and lyrically and is hitting a confident stride. I would follow them to where they are going.
Words by Rick Larson
Picky Bastards 
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