Wednesday has made their mark on the indie rock music scene with their authentic sound tied to their mountain roots. When Wednesday released their new album, Bleeds, new techniques were introduced, and the band challenged their genre in a way they had never done before. Guitar tones filled with grain, voices filled with anger and longing, Wednesday shows emotions through breakups and finding hope in small things in this 36-minute-long album. Parts of the album mimic sounds from their album Rat Saw God. Several songs share a tone with “Chosen to Deserve,” arguably the band’s most popular song.
Wednesday creates Bleeds by stitching together different sounds from different albums, creating a patchwork of all the sounds, emotions, and moments that have brought them onto the stage. They throw contrasting elements together with each song on the album and build on them as time goes on. Lead singer Karly displays all of these emotions with passion and fluidity in her voice. Moments of anger, sadness, hope, and desperation are noticeable in nearly every song. Dread and calm radiate throughout the storytelling of this album. In its entirety, strong themes of bitterness and joy seep through, such as in the song “Wasp.” In the short span of this song, Karly performs with a powerful sense of doom, using techniques with shoegaze and touches of mild screamo to make the song feel noticeably darker than the others. Songs like “Elderberry Wine” and “Would Up Here By Holding on” have a more relaxed tone, where Hartzman sings about her doomed relationship with her band member and now ex, MJ Lenderman.
Bleeds doesn’t try to be something it’s not; it is authentic to the band’s culture and their original musical sound. “Elderberry Wine” has a similar sound to MJ Lenderman’s solo work; his vocals are incredibly recognizable and soft in this song. Karly Hartzman’s vocals in this track match up perfectly with Lenderman’s, creating a soothing sound that will appeal to those who listen. The authenticity of the album shines through when each track introduces an element that you wouldn’t expect, but once it’s pieced together, you couldn’t imagine it sounding any other way.
Wednesday has the ability to make you look deeper into their music to catch all of the small details they throw in. Lyrics such as, “Mounted antlers in the kitchen on a crooked nail Other killers keep teeth, keep the fingernails” in “Elderberry Wine” show the band’s ability to take a line that you wouldn’t normally think to put in a song, and make it sound beautiful and in line with the rest of the album. It takes a lot to make something like what Wednesday throws at the listeners’ work, but they have the concept nailed down. This is my favorite of Wednesday’s 9 albums, the sound complements itself in every way possible, song after song. As all things are, Bleeds is an imperfect album. However, I would argue that its imperfections make it more real, more raw, and more powerful. A stronger message is conveyed with this; the listeners can grasp the fact that they are listening to something written by real people and played in real time. I think that the incorporation of a more grunge sound, shoegaze sound, as well as their usual softer, more folk-rock sound, helps put the entirety of the album in its place.
Photo Credits from: Zachary Chick
