North Carolina fuzz-guitar collective Wednesday have announced their debut Aotearoa headline dates, gracing local stages at Pōneke’s Meow and Tāmaki Makaurau’s Whammy Bar this summer. Incredibly prolific since launching their 2018 debut album “Yep, Definitely”, the US quintet helmed by songwriter / guitarist Karly Hartzman are touring down under following the recent release of their fifth studio long player “Rat Saw God” via Dead Oceans — which prompted Pitchfork to gush “Their outstanding new album is why they’re one of the best indie rock bands around”.
Wednesday is fronted by singer and guitarist Karly Hartzman who, alongside guitarist MJ Lenderman (a rising song writing star in his own right), bassist Margo Shultz, drummer Alan Miller, and lap/pedal steel player Xandy Chelmis, will bring their raucous and rousing live set to fill these intimate venues with a truly unique wall of noise.
“Rat Saw God”, the follow-up to “Twin Plagues” and Wednesday’s Dead Oceans debut, is a triumph of razor-sharp focus, churning intensity, and natural ambition. By this point, the group is so in sync that it sounds like they’re carrying stimuli through the same nervous system while eliciting different responses. For all the darkness that the album digs into, what it drags along with it is never a lack of clarity. On the contrary, these mostly coming-of-age tales, lived or otherwise absorbed, seem to have sharpened so many human senses: Karly Hartzman is acutely aware of irony, especially as it pertains to religion, and, on songs like ‘Bull Believer’, fuses allegory and truth to striking effect. Her descriptions never feel overbearing or exaggerated, but heightened in their reality, zoning in on the blurry space between pain as an experience and tragedy as a story. The blood stays fresh on the page but the pain takes on different dimensions; comedy is an unintended consequence, not an antidote. It all blends together in ways that are immediate, glorious, and totally arresting.
The band are touring in support of their 2023 album “Rat Saw God”, which garnered unanimous praise from across the board with its tales of life in suburban America, both winning hearts and breaking them in equal measure. Wednesday’s sound may have echoes of the best parts of the 90s, but truly is a musical blend all their own, with their wild mash-up of shoegaze, alt-country, emo, and grunge.
With songs that tell stories of stomach pumping, nostalgic small-town bike rides, drugs, and Mortal Kombat, the band’s fifth album is, as perfectly put by NPR, “distinctly, youthfully, chaotically American”, while Uncut gifted it a near perfect score and praised its ability to match horror with humour.
Wednesday’s live shows are reported to be distorted, dangerous, and fearsome affairs, with squalls of fuzzed out pedal steel melding with duelling guitars, pummelling bass, and cacophonous drums, all cut through like a knife by Karly Hartzman’s unmistakable vocal.
Threading emotionally disarming autobiographic narratives through passages of stormy shoegaze distortion, frazzled grunge riffage and lilting alt-country, the ten songs on “Rat Saw God” illustrate everyday epics drawn from the suburban backwaters of the US south. Possessors of an impressively un-Googleable band name, don’t miss Hartzman, guitarist MJ Lenderman, bassist Margo Shultz, drummer Alan Miller, and lap / pedal steel player Xandy Chelmis
released April 7th, 2023
Karly Hartzman – Guitar & Vocals
MJ Lenderman – Guitar & Back-up Vocals
Xandy Chelmis – Lap Steel
Margo Schultz – Bass
Alan Miller – Drums
The Fat Angel Sings 