NEW YORK – A pit bull puppy peeing off a balcony. Mounted antlers in the kitchen on a crooked nail. Pink boiled eggs stay afloat in the brine. For its dedicated audience, the North Carolina alt-country-meets-indie rock band Wednesday is an exemplar in evocative songwriting, where whole worlds are found in short lyrical lines.
And that says nothing of what they sound like. The most exciting band in contemporary indie rock is informed by Drive-By Truckers and Pavement in equal measure, a distinctive sonic fabric of lap steel, guitar fuzz, folksy and jagged vocals.
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On Sept. 19, they will release their sixth and most ambitious full-length, “Bleeds.”
“My songwriting is just better on this album,” Wednesday's singer and songwriter Karly Hartzman explains. “Things are said more succinctly ... the immediacy of these songs was the main growth.”
Wednesday began as Hartzman's solo project, evidenced in 2018's sweet-sounding “yep definitely.” They became a full band on 2020's “I Was Trying to Describe You to Someone,” a dive into guitar distortions, and 2021's “Twin Plagues,” a further refinement of their “creek rock” sound. The lineup consists of Hartzman, bassist Ethan Baechtold, lap steel player Xandy Chelmis, guitarist Jake Lenderman and drummer Alan Miller. Some also tour with Lenderman's solo project, MJ Lenderman. (Hartzman and Lenderman previously dated.)
Wednesday's last album, the narrative “Rat Saw God,” was named one of the best albums of 2023 by The Associated Press partially for its uncanny ability to dive into the particularities and complications of Southern identity. “Bleeds” sharpens those tools.
On “Bleeds,” a band evolves
“Originally, I was going to call it ‘Carolina Girl’ but my bandmates did not like that,'” Hartzman jokes.
“Bleeds” comes from the explosive opening track, “Reality TV Argument Bleeds.”
She likes how the band name and album title sound together — “'Wednesday Bleeds,' which I feel like I do, when I play music ... I'm almost, in a way, bloodletting and exorcising a demon.”
Lyrically, “Bleeds” features some of Wednesday's best work — even in the revisiting of an older song, “Phish Pepsi,” that hilariously references both the jam band and the most disturbing movie released in 2010 — a kind of specificity born from Hartzman's writing practices. During the COVID-19 pandemic, she and Lenderman “wrote 20 lines of writing each day,” a practice adopted from Silver Jews' David Berman. She's also a documentarian of memory: She takes notes of things her friends say and images that are affecting, to later collage them together in songs.
“The well never runs dry,” Hartzman says. “Because I’ve admitted not everything can come from inside. I need to look outward outside of myself for inspiration.”
Remembering, she says, “is the goal for most of the (expletive) I do. ... I care. I want stories to persist.”
Storytelling through song
“Bleeds” manages cohesion across a variance of sound. “Wasp” is hard-core catharsis; lead single “Elderberry Wine” drops guitar noise for shimmery, fermented country. “Wound Up Here (By Holding On),” which references the Appalachian poet Evan Gray, is a pretty indie rock track about a hometown hero who drowns.
The quietest moment on the album, the plucked “The Way Love Goes,” was written as “a love song for Jake when we were still together. ‘Elderberry Wine’ as well.'” Hartzman explains. “‘Elderberry Wine’ is kind of talking about me noticing slight changes in a relationship.”
These are not breakup songs; they exist right before the point of dissolution. “Sweet song is a long con / I drove ya to the airport with the E-brake on,” she sings on the latter.
Later: “Sometimes in my head I give up and / Flip the board completely.”
“I’m understanding how sound creates emotion. That’s what I’m learning over time,” Hartzman says of her musical growth. “I’m also listening to more music with every year that passes. So, my understanding of what’s possible, or what I can be inspired by, shifts.”
A number of the songs pull from childhood memory, as they always have across Wednesday's discography. “I think about growing up a lot,” she says. “When I think of trying to tell ... a story that’s vivid and intense, that’s just the easiest time in my life, where everything felt vivid and intense.”
Longtime fans of the band will find recurring themes and characters from past songs. For example, “Gary's” from their 2021 album returns as the “Bleeds” closer in “Gary’s II,” where he gets into a bar fight.
“In a way, I’m writing the same songs over and over, but I’m just trying to make them better,” she says.
There is always more humanity to excavate. And often, those emotions, “they aren't done with you,” she adds. “They're not letting you go.”
So, let the bloodletting begin.
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A previous version of this story incorrectly listed Margo Schulz as Wednesday's bassist. Ethan Baechtold is the current bassist. Schulz parted ways with the group before the release of the 2023 album “Rat Saw God.”