Wednesday: 2025
Karly Hartzman of Wednesday (photo by Gus Philippas for FUV)
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Wednesday’s sixth album Bleeds—a spiritual successor to 2023’s Rat Saw God, the record that really put the band on the map—dropped September 19, the week after I saw them hit the stage at AmericanaFest.
It was a festival that, to be frank, felt like a strange choice, before I realized it was a perfect fit. Wednesday’s music is twangy and emo, sweet but at times (see "Wasp") pretty screamo. Country, but the kind you can crowd-surf to. (I know: At AmericanaFest, I did.) However you slice it, this is indeed a sound of the South.
A native North Carolinian, Wednesday's founder and frontperson Karly Hartzman is a proud ambassador for the state that birthed and shaped her, and the band has dubbed their genre, and that of overlapping projects like bandmate MJ Lenderman’s solo work, “creek rock.” Assisted by Wednesday's own imagery, it’s a label that instantly evokes a certain energy. It's a sunshine-and-rust-scented, steel pedal-infused summer soundtrack for bouncing around in the back of a truck and downing gas-station beers by a bonfire.
But beyond instrumentals, it’s the lyrics where Hartzman really wows me. Growing up, Karly would cut class to write, and Bleeds is poetic proof of true truancy-honed talent. She is a songwriter who specializes in specifics: Pepsi-can pipes, pissing pit bulls, and pink boiled eggs, weaving together delicious and disturbing details to construct a full character or spin up a whole world in (often less than) four lines.
Bleeds is a product of paying attention, and Hartzman is an artist and archivist, a self-described magpie who collects fragments from the world around her to create stories that speak to all of our truths.
In August, Karly came solo to spend the morning in Studio A—thank god, on a Wednesday—to return to her roots with a solo set, performing three songs from Bleeds: "Elderberry Wine," "Pick Up That Knife," and "Wound Up Here (By Holding On)." After she finished playing, we sat down for an interview where she talked landlord lore, Southern roots, and death as an accidental album theme.
[Recorded: 8/20/25; Engineered by Jim O'Hara with Erin Merriman, Matthew Ellersick, and Holden Buckley. Produced by Meghan Suma. Videographers: Bella Lipayon, Olivia Iannaccone, and Bridget Griminger.]
