Wednesday’s Karly Hartzman’s influences are easy to trace but rarely surface in obvious ways. She grew up on Counting Crows and Edwin McCain, discovered Paramore through her sister, and later fell for My Bloody Valentine and Unwound. Taken together, those threads have shaped a sound that fuses southern twang, dense guitar distortion, and melody.
On Bleeds, the band’s sixth album, that sound has been refined into something leaner and more deliberate. The mix is cleaner, the playing tighter, the intent more defined. Every part of the band’s sound feels more immediate and succinct, built with a sharper sense of structure and purpose than before. Loud and soft, noise and melody, Wednesday strike the right balance across it all. “This is what we’ve been working toward this whole time,” Hartzman has said, calling the band’s singular sound an “unavoidable” result of the band members’ individual tastes and how they have come together.
Written between tours, Hartzman’s songs show her turning lived moments and borrowed memories into something tender and strange. “Pick Up That Knife” spins a chaotic night at a festival into dark humor, “Gary’s II” memorializes a neighbor whose tales of Appalachia still linger, and “Wound Up Here” folds grief into dreamlike fragments. Death, regret, and absurdity weave together without irony. “If you don’t acknowledge it, you’re lying,” she’s said, a sentiment that runs through the record.
Hartzman has said her songwriting is just better on this album, and it shows. Her lyrics are grounded in observation, written with unflinching honesty and a songwriter’s eye for detail, and the band has never sounded better. Bleeds is by far the band’s best album yet and one that shouldn't be missed.
.jpeg)
0 Comments