Wednesday

About Wednesday

Wednesday came out of Asheville, North Carolina in 2017, though the core of the band — vocalist and guitarist Karly Hartzman and guitarist MJ Lenderman — met while working at a smoothie shop. That detail matters because it captures something about their approach: workmanlike, unglamorous, more interested in getting the songs right than cultivating any particular image.

The early stuff was lo-fi and sparse, recorded in bedrooms and basements. Their first album, Yep Definitely, arrived in 2020 and sounded like it — raw guitar tones, vocals mixed like they were coming from another room, the whole thing held together with duct tape and good instincts. But the songwriting was already there. Hartzman has this way of writing about Southern life that doesn't romanticize or condemn, just observes with uncomfortable clarity.

Twin Plagues, also from 2020, pushed things further. The production was still pretty bare-bones, but the band was getting louder and more confident. Songs like "Handsome Man" showed they could write hooks that stuck without sanding down the edges. The album dealt with illness and recovery — Hartzman has Crohn's disease — but avoided making it the whole story. Just part of the landscape.

I Was Trying to Describe You to Someone in 2021 felt like a consolidation. The band had expanded to a five-piece, and the songs had more room to breathe. "Chosen to Deserve" became something of a cult hit, at least in the circles where people still care about shoegaze-adjacent indie rock. The album title itself is perfect for what they do — trying to pin down something that keeps slipping away.

Then came Rat Saw God in 2023, and suddenly more people were paying attention. Produced by Collin Pastore, who worked with Lucy Dacus, it had actual fidelity. You could hear everything. "Bull Believer" opened with one of Hartzman's most vivid story-songs, all specific details and no easy conclusions. The whole record balanced noise and melody in a way that felt earned rather than calculated. It made year-end lists, got them bigger tours, the usual trajectory.

What keeps Wednesday interesting is that they haven't really changed the formula, just deepened it. Hartzman is still writing about the same North Carolina world — strip malls, relatives, the strange violence and tenderness of everyday life. Lenderman has become a minor guitar hero in his own right, both in Wednesday and his solo work. The band can swing from near-whisper to full distorted churn without it feeling like dynamics for dynamics' sake.

They're touring regularly now, playing larger venues, but the music hasn't gotten slick. Still sounds like five people in a room, which is probably the point. They've figured out how to scale up without losing the thing that made them worth listening to in the first place.

Wednesday shows are intimate even in bigger rooms. People shut up and pay attention. Hartzman plays with the kind of focus that feels like watching someone think out loud, no unnecessary movement. The crowd tends toward the people who actually care about guitar work and lyrics rather than atmosphere.

Known for Bullshit, Peak Performance, Brother, Serotonin, Spilled Milk

See Wednesday Live