My first exposure to Wednesday happened while I was trapped in a car with an architect and a drunk. Arthur, the pencil (or I suppose the autocad?), and Cai, the drink, had joined the jam while on our trek from North Wales to County Durham for a holiday with friends. Among the various tracks that graced our ears were notable standouts such as: Geese, Big Thief, MJ Lenderman, Tom Waits and Muddy Waters just to cover all bases. I heard maybe two more songs from my playlist the rest of the trip. By the time we had finally reached our destination the first song I sought out to add to my many playlists was Wednesday’s Elderberry Wine.
Bleeds released on the 19th of September 2025, and between having discovered Elderberry Wine and the album’s release about a month or so ago (as of writing), I had not listened to a single other Wednesday song. In fact, I had no idea when the album was coming out, I only discovered it a week prior to the release as Spotify said “you might like this” and I promptly pre-saved it. I had not heard another single off the record or even a previous record; instead I listened to the new Mac Demarco drop, went back and listened to the most recent Geese releases, I had dropped deeper into my fascination with noise rock. This is not to say however, that I neglected Wednesday. Elderberry Wine, Geese’s 3D country and Big Thief’s Simulation Swarm became the core of a new playlist of mine that I have been listening to obsessively ever since.
All this is to say that when Bleeds dropped, I was going in mostly blind. I was expecting an album full of acoustic love songs, which I would have been happy with based on the singles quality. Reality TV Argument Bleeds, track 1, had immediately ripped this preconception away from me. Its building crescendo at the beginning paired with screeches of strings and deepening bass pulled me in and left me bare when vocalist Karly Hartzman hit me full force once again. The entire first track loves to add and subtract going from rock to noise then back and forth throughout each verse and chorus, to then end abruptly into Townies, a more recognisable style to my elderberry mind. That recognised style is then seamlessly stitched together with the power of track 1. It was here that I knew I was in for a stylistic buffet with refreshing mixings of flavours that seemed perfectly suited to my all over the place tastes.
The influences on the album range from country to indie pop to noise. A combination that by all means should not work, but Wednesday proves that not only does this unique flavour work, they show me that maybe these genres should’ve been put together all along, that the culmination of each individual ingredient should ultimately end up with the dish that is Bleeds. This seemingly-mishmashed-yet-delightful-combo-genre is paired masterfully with the lyrics of Karly Hartzman. We get portraits of men like Gary who takes horrendous care of himself, and a guy who died after spreading the narrator’s nudes and fooling around with other girls. We get a picture of a relationship filled with hints of things that aren’t as they seem – an anger filled metaphor of wasps, fate, spiders and mental castration. Hartzman hands another feast of lyrics to digest and stew over in our minds on top of radical changes in genre mid song.
Having done minimal research, I found links between the vocalist’s lyrics and her past relationship with the band’s guitarist MJ Lenderman. This is seen most prominently in Elderberry Wine with lines such as “I drove you to the airport with the e-brake on / ain’t heard that voice in a long time / had to check back there to make sure you were alive” followed by allusions to angels and the idea that “everybody gets along just fine”. Not to mention the lyric “say I wanna have your baby” followed straight into the chorus of getting along just fine. The depth of these lyrics call back to the many intraband breakups of yore – Fleetwood Mac coming to mind, specifically with the recent reconciliation of Stevie Nicks and Lindsay Buckingham. Of course I think I have established that I know basically nothing about Wednesday beyond this album so I do not believe that Hartzman and Lenderman have reconciled or that there is something to reconcile from in the first place, as far as I know the band remains strong and if this is the output post breakup I think it is safe to say they are in good hands.
Bleeds is an experience from beginning to end taking its listeners on a journey from explosive guitars, drums and lap steels to gently told tales of love between strange characters. It explores the space between these extremes, all with a stellar instrumental to accompany you. If you are on the fence about giving this record a listen (which you shouldn’t be, go listen to the damn thing) I hope these words have swayed you to give it a spin. Who knows you might just find your new favourite genre: Wednesday.
– Ethan Clark
Ethan Clark (any/all) is a writer and musician from North Wales, currently studying a Creative Writing and Publishing masters. Their work has been published in Sprawl Magazine and Underbelly Press issue 5. They really want you to listen to this album!