North Carolina's
Wednesday was born as the project of singer
Karly Hartzman and guitarist Daniel Gorham. Their album
Yep Definitely (2018) and their
four-song EP Wednesday (2019) offered straightforward
folk-rock and country-rock songs.
The project seemed to die when Karly Hartzman and Daniel Gorham
recorded
In the Living Room (2019) as Diva Sweetly in a more
traditional power-pop style.
Instead, they resurfaced
with lap-steel guitarist Xandy Chelmis, drummer Alan Miller and bassist Margo Schultz and released the
eight-song mini-album I Was Trying to Describe You to Someone (2020),
transformed into a strange hybrid of
shoegaze-rock (Fate Is, Coyote) and
country-pop (Love Has No Pride).
New guitarist Jake Lenderman was featured on
the EP How Do You Let Love Into the Heart That Isn t Split Wide Open (2018) and the album
Twin Plagues (2021).
The latter continued their stylistic nomadim, from
shoegazing (Twin Plagues, One More Last One),
to country singalongs (The Burned Down Dairy Queen),
frm
"lite" grunge (Handsome Man, Toothache) to
gentle elegies (How Can You Live If You Can't Love How Can You If You Do,
Ghost of a Dog).
Mowing the Leaves Instead of Piling 'em Up (2022) is a covers album.
Rat Saw God (2023), with new bassist Ethan Baechtold, was only
another hodgepodge of
country-rock (Chosen to Deserve),
shoegazing (Hot Rotten Grass Smell),
grunge-pop (Got Shocked, Quarry),
and southern-rock (the martial Chosen to Deserve, the quasi-boogie Turkey Vultures), if it weren't for the
eight-minute concentrate of desperation Bull Believer, by far their
emotional zenith.
Bleeds (2025) keeps perfecting that fusion of
noise-rock and alt-country which is borderline shoegaze-pop.
Emblematic is opener
Reality TV Argument Bleeds, the way it balances guitar mayhem and nursery-rhyme singalong.
The singer's tour de force in the rustic Townies is matched by crunchy Jesus And Mary Chain-esque refrain and riff.
The catchy and gentle folk ballad Elderberry Wine provides the counterbalance to the noisier songs.
After the first four songs there is little to talk about, except the
whispered moribund Carolina Murder Suicide that seems to belong to another album altogether.
