Review: Wednesday — Bleeds

Wednesday
Bleeds
Dead Oceans
Street: 09.19.2025
Wednesday = Hardcore Courtney Barnett + Southern Gothic Dinosaur Jr.

Wednesday is out there doing it! After a grueling-but-successful tour in support of their instant classic album, Rat Saw God, the group — consisting of Karly Hartzman, Xandy Chemlis, Alan Miller, Ethan Baechtold and MJ Lenderman — decamped to drop of sun studios in Asheville, North Carolina, to record their next record with frequent collaborator Alex Farrar.

The end result, Bleeds, can only be described as a Wednesday album because there’s nothing currently out there quite like it. The sound is in the sweet spot somewhere between proto-grunge and post-hardcore. It’s melodic but hard. The lyrics are wry but sardonic. Hartzman, the band’s founder and chief songwriter, aptly describes it as “Wednesday Creek Rock.”

The songs might be centered in Asheville, but they resonate with the small-town boy in me that used to ditch my LDS seminary class to hang in the canyon and swim in the Salt Creek. For me, the feeling of “creek rock” embodies what it’s like to be a small-town slacker, who has ambitions to get out, but deep down knows they never will.

This is epitomized on the track “Wound Up Here (By Holdin’ On),” which tells the story of a friend who pulled a dead body out of a river with Hartzman’s lilting voice against a crunchy wall of guitars until her voice devolves into a guttural scream of desperation. The protagonist spins a vivid Southern Gothic tale of life taken too soon and how disorienting loss is for those left behind. We’re meant to picture the dead’s “puffy face” after he was pulled out of the river, while at the same time remembering his “varsity face” in a makeshift memorial at the local high school. It’s haunting and reflective all at the same time.

The standout track on Bleeds (for a number of reasons) is “Elderberry Wine.” The tone of the lyrics and the easy, breezy, classic Americana sound — driven by the Chemlis’ shimmering pedal steel and buoyed by Lenderman’s harmonies in the chorus — gives the listener a brief reprieve from the darker themes on the rest of the record. The song just sounds like summer feels. It also made me pause and ponder, “What is it about the South and fruit-based wines?” (Strawberry wine? Wine made from the biggest watermelons on the vine?) and “Will bottles of gas station hard-boiled eggs make a comeback now that people are so concerned with protein intake?”

“Phish Pepsi” contains what might be the best line of the year — heck, maybe even the decade. It commences with jangly guitars reminiscent of the aforementioned jam band, which may lead you to believe it will be an homage to Phish, but that’s a misdirect. The final verse starts with Hartzman exclaiming, “We watched a Phish concert and Human Centipede / Two things I now wish I’d never seen.” Now, I’ve never experienced either, but it was out of fear I’d feel the same way!

One of the more poignant moments on the record is “The Way Love Goes.” It features stripped-down guitar and Chemlis’ eerie pedal steel paired with a contemplative Hartzman lamenting a treasured relationship that appears to be fizzling out. This could be referencing the ending of her relationship with Lenderman just prior to the sessions for Bleeds. Anyone who’s been through the end of a relationship, especially if it’s with someone you still have to see every day, can relate to the closing lines: “I know it’s not been easy / And I know it can’t always be / And that’s the way love goes.”

In “Carolina Murder Suicide,” Hartzman dips her toe into the ever-more popular true crime genre — a staple in rock ’n’ roll ever since Bruce Springsteen’s Nebraska. Coincidentally enough, both songs feature a girl in the front yard twirling her baton. The band serves up an ethereal vibe as Hartzman slowly and somberly walks us through the beats of a gruesome crime that left a killer and their victim in “scattered piles of a Carolina murder suicide.” It’s another in a long line of songs on the album that delve more into the aftermath of a tragic event, rather than the event itself. In this case, Hartzman wonders what will happen when the flames engulfing the murder house burn out. Will the town still be gossiping about the how and why, or will the story just wash away like the water from the fire hoses down the drain?

While the tone of most of the album is bleak and dour, Bleeds ends on a funny, out-of-left-field note. “Gary’s II” is about what happens when someone mistakenly hits you in the face with a baseball bat thinking you were the man having an affair with his wife. It’s a straightforward country song with all the finger picking and propulsive percussion you’d expect, along with a down-on-your-luck story that recounts how Gary ended up with dentures at the ripe old age of 33.

Bleeds is the logical successor to Rat Saw God, and makes a strong case that Wednesday is one of the pre-eminent indie rock bands working today. It hits the streets September 19.

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