I’ve always loved music that carries a sense of heaviness. I still remember listening to “White Room” by Cream on a cassette tape in my dad’s truck and how the music seemed to cover me like an Afghan blanket with light peeking through the holes.
That’s the feel I get from “Bleeds,” the sixth studio album by Asheville, North Carolina-based band Wednesday, released Sept. 19, 2025, via Dead Oceans.
I first discovered the band because its name was similar to one of my favorite high school bands, Thursday, the New Jersey post-hardcore band.
Since its formation in 2017, I’ve been picking up bits and pieces of the band’s albums as I’ve gravitated more toward the sounds of Soccer Mommy, Waxahatchee and MJ Lenderman.
While the band stayed with producer Alex Farrar, who worked on the last two Wednesday albums, “Rat Saw God” and “Twin Plagues,” “Bleeds” is the first to feature bassist Ethan Baechtold, who toured on “Rat Saw God” in 2023.
Also, Lenderman announced he would not tour with Wednesday following this release and will be replaced by Jake Pugh on the “Bleeds” tour.
The album opens with distortion and a Lenderman guitar lick before Karly Hartzman comes in with her signature gritty and attentive lyrics.
Anyone who grew up in a small town or went to a small high school can find some truth in the lyrics on “Townies,” which recounts stories that sound too relatable to be entirely imaginary. It’s heartbreaking and honest but also cathartic in the way Hartzman forgives the subjects of the song by its finish.
Catchin’ up with the townies
Some have gone but most are still around
The ghosts of them surround me
They hang on tight until they drown
By the third track, I found myself completely lost in the Wednesday groove.
Misread your name at thе wake
Snack from a vending machine
Like a smack on the ass at the back of a dream
Mounted antlers in the kitchen on a crooked nail
Other killers keep teeth, keep the fingernails
There is a sweet, heartbreaking tenderness to “Elderberry Wine,” and the pedal steel guitar by Xandy Chelmis gives the track a shiny country twang.
There is no better sound on the album than Lenderman and Hartzman harmonizing the chorus: “The pink boiled eggs stay afloat in the brine, cause even the best champagne still tastes like elderberry wine.”
Besides Lenderman, Hartzman may be one of my favorite modern songwriters with how she can turn seemingly anything into a song — like “Phish Pepsi,” which takes its title from smoking weed out of a Pepsi can while watching Phish.
Her lyrics just stick with me, like on “Candy Breath,” where she sings:
They’ll fight over your body
Drag you to the shore
Whether or not they know it
Everyone’s divorced
The heartbreak that began on “Elderberry Wine” continues on “The Way Love Goes,” with Hartzman and guitars delivering two verses of unrhymed lyrics telling the story of her breakup with Lenderman.
It’s the everyday lyrics, almost like Beat poetry, that amaze me when paired with the noisy rock on “Pick Up That Knife,” which also includes a shout-out to Chelmis throwing up in the mosh pit at a Death Grips show.
The band leans into the hardcore sound of my youth on “Wasp,” with lyrics that could point to the aforementioned Thursday or Thrice:
My life is a spiderweb
Built into the doorway
When you walk in, you duck your head
And the wind is always blowing
“Bitter Everyday” is another true story, this time about a woman who sang a song with Lenderman, only for them to later find out she was wanted for murder after spotting a poster with her mugshot on a telephone pole defaced with Juggalo makeup.
The piano makes its first appearance on “Carolina Murder Suicide,” which is about the Murdaugh murders.
“I was like, ‘Damn, if I’m going to devote 17 hours of my life listening to a podcast about this, I should at least get a song out of it.’ So I wrote a kind of interpretation of that story from the perspective of the girl who lived across the street. Kind of observing them,” Hartzman told Rolling Stone.
The album closes with “Gary’s II,” which sounds like the name of a bar but is about a story that Hartzman and Lenderman’s landlord told them before he died.
Catch Wednesday when they go on tour with Daffo Nov. 10 at Union Transfer in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; Nov. 11 at Brooklyn Steel in Brooklyn, New York and, Nov. 21 and 22 at the 9:30 Club in Washington D.C.
Get “Bleeds” from Wednesday, Secretly Store, Bandcamp, Amazon, Apple Music, YouTube Music, Spotify, Pandora, Tidal, Deezer and qobuz.
Favorite Tracks
Townies
Wound Up Here (By Holdin On)
Elderberry Wine
Pick Up That Knife
Bitter Everyday
