The world according to Wednesday, your new favorite alt-country indie rock band
And that says nothing of what they sound like. The most exciting band in contemporary indie rock is informed by Drive-By Truckers and Pavement in equal measure, a distinctive sonic fabric of lap steel, guitar fuzz, folksy and jagged vocals.
On Sept. 19, they will release their sixth and most ambitious full-length, 'Bleeds.'
'My songwriting is just better on this album,' Wednesday's singer and songwriter Karly Hartzman explains. 'Things are said more succinctly ... the immediacy of these songs was the main growth.'
Wednesday began as Hartzman's solo project, evidenced in 2018's sweet-sounding 'yep definitely.' They became a full band on 2020's 'I Was Trying to Describe You to Someone,' a dive into guitar distortions, and 2021's 'Twin Plagues,' a further refinement of their 'creek rock' sound. The lineup consists of Hartzman, bassist Ethan Baechtold, lap steel player Xandy Chelmis, guitarist Jake Lenderman and drummer Alan Miller. Some also tour with Lenderman's solo project, MJ Lenderman. (Hartzman and Lenderman previously dated.)
Wednesday's last album, the narrative 'Rat Saw God,' was named one of the best albums of 2023 by The Associated Press partially for its uncanny ability to dive into the particularities and complications of Southern identity. 'Bleeds' sharpens those tools.
On 'Bleeds,' a band evolves
'Originally, I was going to call it 'Carolina Girl' but my bandmates did not like that,'' Hartzman jokes.
'Bleeds' comes from the explosive opening track, 'Reality TV Argument Bleeds.'
She likes how the band name and album title sound together — ''Wednesday Bleeds,' which I feel like I do, when I play music ... I'm almost, in a way, bloodletting and exorcising a demon.'
Lyrically, 'Bleeds' features some of Wednesday's best work — even in the revisiting of an older song, 'Phish Pepsi,' that hilariously references both the jam band and the most disturbing movie released in 2010 — a kind of specificity born from Hartzman's writing practices. During the COVID-19 pandemic, she and Lenderman 'wrote 20 lines of writing each day,' a practice adopted from Silver Jews' David Berman. She's also a documentarian of memory: She takes notes of things her friends say and images that are affecting, to later collage them together in songs.
'The well never runs dry,' Hartzman says. 'Because I've admitted not everything can come from inside. I need to look outward outside of myself for inspiration.'
Remembering, she says, 'is the goal for most of the (expletive) I do. ... I care. I want stories to persist.'
Storytelling through song
'Bleeds' manages cohesion across a variance of sound. 'Wasp' is hard-core catharsis; lead single 'Elderberry Wine' drops guitar noise for shimmery, fermented country. 'Wound Up Here (By Holding On),' which references the Appalachian poet Evan Gray, is a pretty indie rock track about a hometown hero who drowns.
The quietest moment on the album, the plucked 'The Way Love Goes,' was written as 'a love song for Jake when we were still together. 'Elderberry Wine' as well.'' Hartzman explains. ''Elderberry Wine' is kind of talking about me noticing slight changes in a relationship.'
These are not breakup songs; they exist right before the point of dissolution. 'Sweet song is a long con / I drove ya to the airport with the E-brake on,' she sings on the latter.
Later: 'Sometimes in my head I give up and / Flip the board completely.'
'I'm understanding how sound creates emotion. That's what I'm learning over time,' Hartzman says of her musical growth. 'I'm also listening to more music with every year that passes. So, my understanding of what's possible, or what I can be inspired by, shifts.'
A number of the songs pull from childhood memory, as they always have across Wednesday's discography. 'I think about growing up a lot,' she says. 'When I think of trying to tell ... a story that's vivid and intense, that's just the easiest time in my life, where everything felt vivid and intense.'
Longtime fans of the band will find recurring themes and characters from past songs. For example, 'Gary's' from their 2021 album returns as the 'Bleeds' closer in 'Gary's II,' where he gets into a bar fight.
'In a way, I'm writing the same songs over and over, but I'm just trying to make them better,' she says.
There is always more humanity to excavate. And often, those emotions, 'they aren't done with you,' she adds. 'They're not letting you go.'
___
A previous version of this story incorrectly listed Margo Schulz as Wednesday's bassist. Ethan Baechtold is the current bassist. Schulz parted ways with the group before the release of the 2023 album 'Rat Saw God.'
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
San Francisco Chronicle
2 hours ago
- San Francisco Chronicle
Televangelist Jimmy Swaggart, whose ministry was toppled by prostitution scandals, dies at 90
BATON ROUGE, La. (AP) — Televangelist Jimmy Swaggart, who became a household name amassing an enormous following and multimillion-dollar ministry only to be undone by his penchant for prostitutes, has died. Swaggart died decades after his once vast audience dwindled and his name became a punchline on late night television. His death was announced Tuesday on his public Facebook page. A cause wasn't immediately given, though at 90 he had been in poor health. The Louisiana native was best known for being a captivating Pentecostal preacher with a massive following before being caught on camera with a prostitute in New Orleans in 1988, one of a string of successful TV preachers brought down in the 1980s and '90s by sex scandals. He continued preaching for decades, but with a reduced audience. Swaggart encapsulated his downfall in a tearful 1988 sermon, in which he wept and apologized but made no reference to his connection to a prostitute. 'I have sinned against you,' Swaggart told parishioners nationwide. 'I beg you to forgive me.' He announced his resignation from the Assemblies of God later that year, shortly after the church said it was defrocking him for rejecting punishment it had ordered for 'moral failure.' The church had wanted him to undergo a two-year rehabilitation program, including not preaching for a full year. Swaggart said at the time that he knew dismissal was inevitable but insisted he had no choice but to separate from the church to save his ministry and Bible college. From poverty and oil fields to a household name Swaggart grew up poor, the son of a preacher, in a music-rich family. He excelled at piano and gospel music, playing and singing with talented cousins who took different paths: rock-'n'-roller Jerry Lee Lewis and country singer Mickey Gilley. In his hometown of Ferriday, Louisiana, Swaggart said he first heard the call of God at age 8. The voice gave him goose bumps and made his hair tingle, he said. 'Everything seemed different after that day in front of the Arcade Theater,' he said in a 1985 interview with the Jacksonville Journal-Courier in Illinois. 'I felt better inside. Almost like taking a bath.' He preached and worked part time in oil fields until he was 23. He then moved entirely into his ministry: preaching, playing piano and singing gospel songs with the barrelhouse fervor of cousin Lewis at Assemblies of God revivals and camp meetings. Swaggart started a radio show, a magazine, and then moved into television, with outspoken views. He called Roman Catholicism 'a false religion. It is not the Christian way,' and claimed that Jews suffered for thousands of years 'because of their rejection of Christ.' 'If you don't like what I say, talk to my boss,' he once shouted as he strode in front of his congregation at his Family Worship Center in Baton Rouge, where his sermons moved listeners to speak in tongues and stand up as if possessed by the Holy Spirit. Swaggart's messages stirred thousands of congregants and millions of TV viewers, making him a household name by the late 1980s. Contributors built Jimmy Swaggart Ministries into a business that made an estimated $142 million in 1986. His Baton Rouge complex still includes a worship center and broadcasting and recording facilities. The scandals that led to Swaggart's ruin Swaggart's downfall came in the late 1980s as other prominent preachers faced similar scandals. Swaggart said publicly that his earnings were hurt in 1987 by the sex scandal surrounding rival televangelist Jim Bakker and a former church secretary at Bakker's PTL ministry organization. The following year, Swaggart was photographed at a hotel with Debra Murphree, an admitted prostitute who told reporters that the two did not have sex but that the preacher had paid her to pose nude. She later repeated the claim — and posed nude — for Penthouse magazine. The surveillance photos that crippled Swaggart's career apparently stemmed from his rivalry with preacher Marvin Gorman, whom Swaggart had accused of sexual misdeeds. Gorman hired the photographer who captured Swaggart and Murphree on film. Swaggart later paid Gorman $1.8 million to settle a lawsuit over the sexual allegations against Gorman. More trouble came in 1991, when police in California detained Swaggart with another prostitute. The evangelist was charged with driving on the wrong side of the road and driving an unregistered Jaguar. His companion, Rosemary Garcia, said Swaggart became nervous when he saw the police car and weaved when he tried to stuff pornographic magazines under a car seat. Swaggart was later mocked by the late TV comic Phil Hartman, who impersonated him on NBC's 'Saturday Night Live.' Out of the public eye but still in the pulpit The evangelist largely stayed out of the news in later years but remained in the pulpit at Jimmy Swaggart Ministries, often joined by his son, Donnie, a fellow preacher. His radio station broadcast church services and gospel music to 21 states, and Swaggart's ministry boasted a worldwide audience on the internet. 'There's been no greater example of a good and faithful servant than my father. No ifs, ands and buts about it. A man who lived his life for the cause of Christ,' Donnie Swaggart said in a video message shared on social media Sunday about his dad's final days. The preacher caused another brief stir in 2004 with remarks about being 'looked at' amorously by a gay man. 'And I'm going to be blunt and plain: If one ever looks at me like that, I'm going to kill him and tell God he died,' Jimmy Swaggart said, to laughter from the congregation. He later apologized. Swaggart made few public appearances outside his church, save for singing 'Amazing Grace' at the 2005 funeral of Louisiana Secretary of State Fox McKeithen, a prominent name in state politics for decades. In 2022, he shared memories at the memorial service for Lewis, his cousin and rock 'n' roll pioneer. The pair had released 'The Boys From Ferriday,' a gospel album, earlier that year.
Associated Press
3 hours ago
- Associated Press
Televangelist Jimmy Swaggart, whose ministry was toppled by prostitution scandals, dies at 90
BATON ROUGE, La. (AP) — Televangelist Jimmy Swaggart, whose multimillion-dollar ministry and huge audience dwindled following his prostitution scandals, has died. He was 90. Swaggart death was announced Tuesday on his public Facebook page. A cause wasn't immediately given, though Swaggart had been in ill health. The Louisiana native was best known for being a captivating Pentecostal preacher with a massive following before being caught on camera with a prostitute in New Orleans in 1988, one of a string of successful TV preachers brought down in the 1980s and '90s by sex scandals. He continued preaching for decades, but with a reduced audience. Swaggart encapsulated his downfall in a tearful 1988 sermon, in which he wept and apologized but made no reference to his connection to a prostitute. 'I have sinned against you,' Swaggart told parishioners nationwide. 'I beg you to forgive me.' He announced his resignation from the Assemblies of God later that year, shortly after the church said it was defrocking him for rejecting punishment it had ordered for 'moral failure.' The church had wanted him to undergo a two-year rehabilitation program, including not preaching for a full year. Swaggart said at the time that he knew dismissal was inevitable but insisted he had no choice but to separate from the church to save his ministry and Bible college. From poverty and oil fields to a household name Swaggart grew up poor, the son of a preacher, in a music-rich family. He excelled at piano and gospel music, playing and singing with talented cousins who took different paths: rock-'n'-roller Jerry Lee Lewis and country singer Mickey Gilley. In his hometown of Ferriday, Louisiana, Swaggart said he first heard the call of God at age 8. The voice gave him goose bumps and made his hair tingle, he said. 'Everything seemed different after that day in front of the Arcade Theater,' he said in a 1985 interview with the Jacksonville Journal-Courier in Illinois. 'I felt better inside. Almost like taking a bath.' He preached and worked part time in oil fields until he was 23. He then moved entirely into his ministry: preaching, playing piano and singing gospel songs with the barrelhouse fervor of cousin Lewis at Assemblies of God revivals and camp meetings. Swaggart started a radio show, a magazine, and then moved into television, with outspoken views. He called Roman Catholicism 'a false religion. It is not the Christian way,' and claimed that Jews suffered for thousands of years 'because of their rejection of Christ.' 'If you don't like what I say, talk to my boss,' he once shouted as he strode in front of his congregation at his Family Worship Center in Baton Rouge, where his sermons moved listeners to speak in tongues and stand up as if possessed by the Holy Spirit. Swaggart's messages stirred thousands of congregants and millions of TV viewers, making him a household name by the late 1980s. Contributors built Jimmy Swaggart Ministries into a business that made an estimated $142 million in 1986. His Baton Rouge complex still includes a worship center and broadcasting and recording facilities. The scandals that led to Swaggart's ruin Swaggart's downfall came in the late 1980s as other prominent preachers faced similar scandals. Swaggart said publicly that his earnings were hurt in 1987 by the sex scandal surrounding rival televangelist Jim Bakker and a former church secretary at Bakker's PTL ministry organization. The following year, Swaggart was photographed at a hotel with Debra Murphree, an admitted prostitute who told reporters that the two did not have sex but that the preacher had paid her to pose nude. She later repeated the claim — and posed nude — for Penthouse magazine. The surveillance photos that crippled Swaggart's career apparently stemmed from his rivalry with preacher Marvin Gorman, whom Swaggart had accused of sexual misdeeds. Gorman hired the photographer who captured Swaggart and Murphree on film. Swaggart later paid Gorman $1.8 million to settle a lawsuit over the sexual allegations against Gorman. More trouble came in 1991, when police in California detained Swaggart with another prostitute. The evangelist was charged with driving on the wrong side of the road and driving an unregistered Jaguar. His companion, Rosemary Garcia, said Swaggart became nervous when he saw the police car and weaved when he tried to stuff pornographic magazines under a car seat. Swaggart was later mocked by the late TV comic Phil Hartman, who impersonated him on NBC's 'Saturday Night Live.' Out of the public eye but still in the pulpit The evangelist largely stayed out of the news in later years but remained in the pulpit at Jimmy Swaggart Ministries, often joined by his son, Donnie, a fellow preacher. His radio station broadcast church services and gospel music to 21 states, and Swaggart's ministry boasted a worldwide audience on the internet. The preacher caused another brief stir in 2004 with remarks about being 'looked at' amorously by a gay man. 'And I'm going to be blunt and plain: If one ever looks at me like that, I'm going to kill him and tell God he died,' Swaggart said, to laughter from the congregation. He later apologized. Swaggart made few public appearances outside his church, save for singing 'Amazing Grace' at the 2005 funeral of Louisiana Secretary of State Fox McKeithen, a prominent name in state politics for decades. In 2022, he shared memories at the memorial service for Lewis, his cousin and rock 'n' roll pioneer. The pair had released 'The Boys From Ferriday,' a gospel album, earlier that year.
Associated Press
4 hours ago
- Associated Press
BTS will return in spring 2026 with a new album and world tour
NEW YORK (AP) — Their reunion? It's smooth like butter. The K-pop septet BTS will return in spring 2026 with a new album and world tour. Members Jin, RM, V, Jimin, J-Hope, Jung Kook and Suga made the announcement Tuesday during a livestream on Weverse, an online fan platform owned by BTS management company Hybe. It was the first time all seven members have broadcast live together since September 2022. 'We'll be releasing a new BTS album in the spring of next year. Starting in July, all seven of us will begin working closely together on new music,' the band said in a statement. 'Since it will be a group album, it will reflect each member's thoughts and ideas. We're approaching the album with the same mindset we had when we first started.' They also announced a world tour, their first in nearly four years. The news arrives a few weeks after BTS superstars RM, V, Jimin and Jung Kook were discharged from South Korea's military after fulfilling their mandatory service. In South Korea, all able-bodied men aged 18 to 28 are required by law to perform 18-21 months of military service under a conscription system meant to deter aggression from rival North Korea. Six of the group's seven members served in the army, while Suga, the last to return, fulfilled his duty as a social service agent, an alternative to military service. Jin, the oldest BTS member, was discharged in June 2024. J-Hope was discharged in October. South Korea's law gives special exemptions to athletes, classical and traditional musicians, and ballet and other dancers if they have obtained top prizes in certain competitions and are assessed to have enhanced national prestige. K-pop stars and other entertainers aren't subject to such privileges. However, in 2020, BTS postponed their service after South Korea's National Assembly revised its Military Service Act, allowing K-pop stars to delay their enlistment until age 30.
