Wednesday by Brandon McClain
Asheville, North Carolina has become quite the destination for hipsters, artists, musicians and anyone who can appreciate the je ne sais quoi that informs free thinking and creativity. It should come as no surprise, then, that a band like Wednesday would emerge from there, bearing a mélange of empathetic and ethereal southern rock with a hint of murder ballad quintessence filtered through classic country and shoegaze.
At its core, it’s Americana personified by the players’ hopes and dreams, good and bad. Karly Hartzman, the heart of Wednesday, weaves tales of love and loss, singing and playing guitar on the band’s acclaimed 2023 album Rat Saw God (a best-of-year selection by Pitchfork, Rolling Stone, The Fader, NME and Stereogum). With MJ Leenderman on guitar, Margo Schultz on bass, drummer Alan Miller and steel guitarist Xandy Chelmis, Wednesday build, in their own word, “a shrine to minutia.”
“Rat Saw God is an album about riding a bike down a suburban stretch in Greensboro while listening to My Bloody Valentine for the first time on an iPod Nano,” the band writes of its fifth full-length, “past a creek that runs through the neighborhood riddled with broken glass bottles and condoms, a front-yard filled with broken and rusted car parts, a lonely and dilapidated house reclaimed by kudzu.”
“All of the art I appreciate is that same style,” Hartzman told Variety in 2023. “It’s very southern, an appreciation of slowing things down and noticing details. Vic Chesnutt is the person that comes to mind, someone that could write entire songs about a single detail pulled from a day of his life, and all the novelists I like that I talk about all the time, like Mary Karr and Richard Brautigan.
Indicative of Americana players who came before them — think Jason isbell and Caitlin Cary — but never derivative, Wednesday are self-aware myth makers birthing new legends from stone and steel in a flawed land that struggles to live up to its ideals.
Wednesday, with Hotline TNT and They Hate Change, play 7pm Tuesday, February 6 at Gramps in Miami. wednesday.band ~Tim Moffatt
