a thread for the North Carolina twangy indie-rock band Wednesday

They need their own thread because their new album Rat Saw God, out April 7, is *terrific*. It's going to get great reviews and they're going to get a lot of attention. (They already have/are.)

Twangy, noisy, shoegaze-y indie-rock from Asheville, North Carolina. Singer Karly Hartzman writes the songs. Guitarist is Mark Lenderman, whose most recent solo-ish album (under the name MJ Lenderman) was one of 2022's very best: https://mjlenderman.bandcamp.com/album/boat-songs

The album:
https://wednesdayband.bandcamp.com/album/rat-saw-god

Singles so far:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CTi7e9gEpN4

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0MawIv5pDFE

Good stuff. Shame they're making themselves known around the time of that awful Netflix meme show.

Will check this out, for some reason I thought Wednesday was the name of an early 00s emo band

lol that would be thursday

Hahaha ooh okay that's where I got that

i like wednesday but i love the mj lenderman solo album. i'm not big on no alternative/twang rock but that album also sounds like a throwback DIY/lofi indie album in ways that are catnip to me, and the lyrics are good too

even for wednesday, i like their noisy rock songs (e.g. bull believer) more than their twangy songs

Yeah, enjoyed their album from last year -- wrote about it for Shfl the other week -- and looking forward to this new one.

xxp yes, the Lenderman album is better than anything Wednesday has done so far, though i do think that's notable, because Wednesday is a good band.

it's just that Boat Songs is "best album of 2022" good.

if you haven't checked out all his older stuff on Bandcamp, do so. heavier Jason Molina vibes back there, and more noisy/lo-fi stuff.

their last album was a pleasant enough indie rock album but nothing at all special. last year's mj lenderman album was really good though. the new one seems to be getting quite a push so i hope it lives up to the hype

this mj lenderman record is great, vibe reminds me a bit of some 90s arty garage/roots weirdos like the ass ponys or jack logan

i assume Lenderman isn't going to make the ILM albums poll currently being rolled out, is it? i haven't been paying attention to nominations, chit-chat, etc., but i *do* know what this place is like in general.

i assume not though i did give it my top position in a weighted poll

I just can’t believe anyone over the age of 19 can relate to this garbage but then again I feel that way about most new popular music. Sounds like they took the sound of 90s alternative radio and stripped it of everything anthemic, leaving the style but none of the substance. Listened to the lead off single but when she got to the part about having a nosebleed while her friend played Mortal Kombat I finally had to switch it off, I guess I’ve assumed my final form as a crotchety old man but I can accept that if it means I never have to hear this band again.

the mj lenderman didn't quite make my ballot (came very close though) but i wouldn't really be surprised either way - could have gone just enough under the radar here to miss out but well-executed indie rock is hardly verboten here

This is definitely getting a major push from the publicists though so I’m sure we’ll find the same people who write off grunge convincing themselves that this is a breath of fresh air.

Haven't really clicked with Wednesday yet, but came to this thread for the MJ Lenderman talk. His album from last year was fantastic, I also hear a lot of Neil Young in his guitar playing, which is a huge plus in my book.

the cover art for boat songs cracks me up, it looks like it's going be some abstract minimal techno

https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/63a48323a795af62e49c5c39/1:1/w_450%2Cc_limit/MJ-Lenderman-Boat-Songs.jpg

Woops, just posted to the shoegaze thread without looking up their own thread. I *really* like some of their songs. Like if Adult Mom fronted Brief History era Lilys

new album is quite good

Hoping to see them here next month! Will have to check the dates again.

This is terrific.

We'll make a shoegazer out of you yet.

between this and Lenderman's solo catalog, we have a new indie-rock power couple, fo sho.

Like

I gave this a few listens; "Quarry" would be my keeper track. Didn't care for the rest of it too much (or the vocals at all).

i love everything about this album except the singing. just a little too flat and affectless.

quarry verse melody owes a lot to waterloo sunset

like this album a lot but (first listen caveat) boy is it backloaded!

i didn't perk up until "chosen to deserve," but from then on out, it's all gold, esp. "quarry" and "turkey vultures"

i don't understand the complaints about the singing, i think it's lovely

ok second listen and i'm not sure how i dismissed "bull believer," dang

i'm ok with the singing on a song-by-song basis, it starts to grate over a full album - like i said it's the flat tone, combined with the faux-country/indie singer hiccup (? i don't really know what to call this). it gets old fast.

"bull believer" is my favorite bc the screaminess balances out the flatness

the vocal twang isn't really an issue, doesn't feel "faux" to me, just a byproduct of a north carolina upbringing.

"quarry" def does evoke the "waterloo sunset" melody

I'm less enamored of the album when it slows down.

If this album had been released in ‘95 it would have been in the bargain bin by ‘96

Mixing in this kind of twang with alt-rock would have been downright heresy in '95, never would have existed. I like this and I do like the slower songs too, "Formula One" is great.

I saw someone refer to these guys as "bootgaze", which is funny but also kind of makes sense.

Mixing in this kind of twang with alt-rock would have been downright heresy in '95, never would have existed.

I don't think it's necessarily in a totally different dimension from stuff like Geraldine Fibbers and The Grifters(?)

i don't really hear much shoegaze in this, it just seems like a trendier influence to cite than alternative rock (not addressed at anyone on this thread so much as the dj i heard describe the album as shoegaze last week)

there were a few songs on the last album that were pretty shoegazey (more than anything on this album) but they're hardly a shoegaze band

This album has grown on me, btw (...still not the vocal so much, but that's ok)

I just listened to the band's 2021 album, Twin Plagues, and would say it def has more "shoegazey" elements than the current one.

-gaze is just becoming shorthand for "has noisy/distorted electric guitars" unfortunately

listened to the new one again yesterday and it was hitting a lot harder for me. the lyrics are good. it's oddly a great gym album.

these cats know how to whip up a pretty good racket, and yet they also show a lot of restraint with it. that's one thing i really like about them.

the end of the Mortal Kombat song is pretty bad but I like this pretty much

welp ... this album keeps getting better, i think.

I just came across the term "countrygaze," which I think Wednesday may have made up to describe themselves and related acts. If that's a genre, it seems like Mojave 3 would be the pioneers.

glenn has it covered, I see: https://everynoise.com/research.cgi?mode=genre&name=countrygaze

if you're loo-kinnnng
foooorrrr meeee,
i'm in the baaaack offff annnn
S
U
V,
doinnnn iiiit innnn some cullll-
de-sac,
under-neeeeeeeeeeeeath a
dog
wood
tree

the new(ish) Lenderman single is terrific

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tb47lqqF-v0

lenderman live album was a lot of fun. reminded me of the "ear bleeding country" of dinosaur jr.

Boy, this album has held up well.

i like this album but god there's something so hilarious about at the end of the one song where she's singing FINISH HIM from mortal kombat and then goes into this wordless yelping and it's just ridiculous and so self-serious at the same time I just started laughing at my desk a bit ago

[listens to mj lenderman once] this wednesday record is great!

the riff in “chosen to deserve”

like holy shit!!

this song was in linklater’s EVERYBODY WANTS SOME, right? like okayed through the whole movie?

played* smh

as perfect of a song as “chosen to deserve” is, I think I might like “formula one” even more. there’s something so warmly familiar about it I can’t place

K3vin did you like the Ratboys album

Karly Hartzman doing a solo East Coast tour in December, looking forward to seeing that.

Might just do that too, even though it’d be my third time seeing her this year.

And let’s not forget Bath County, complete with “Man Sized” homage video.

K3vin did you like the Ratboys album

― Tim F, Sunday, September 22, 2024 9:11 AM (seven hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

have not heard? good?

It’s both more Meat Puppetsy and more Veruca Salty than Wednesday but/and I prefer it a bit

still obsessed with “formula one” -> “chosen to deserve”

Anybody ever notice the vocal melody from Quarry is extremely similar to the one from the Kink's Waterloo Sunset? Probably my favorite song by Wednesday, I love that melody.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N_MqfF0WBsU

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SjKU1qVhJl4

yeah i noticed that straightaway and then discovered i was not alone in thinking so

Ah shit, I only did ctrl+f for Kinks on this thread, didn't realize the point had already been made. Alas.

surprised there hasn't been more (any?) talk on here about the recent singles & forthcoming LP. The singles have all been really good!

that autumn almanac rip makes me not like them

new album feels like a miss

I'd heard enough good things about "Rat Saw God" that, ironically, I never got around to playing it, since I wanted to wait for the right time/day and that combination never quite arrived. Until today, and man, is this not anything at all what I expected, so much so that I had to make sure I put on the right album. I think it's because I thought it would lean harder on the "twangy" and not on the "noisy, shoegaze-y indie-rock," which is where most of the album falls, imo. I even had someone years ago tell me it inexplicably reminded her of the Drive-By Truckers, which ... they both have guitars, I guess?

Not a big fan of the aforementioned (largely) flat/unaffected vocals, but there are good songs among the racket, and I suppose something like "Bull Believer" in particular is great in a full frontal Pixies assault sort of way (even if as I listened to it I could only imagine how quickly my wife would tell me to turn it off). I can see why Tim F. brought up Ratboys, whose most recent album I prefer to this (previous) Wednesday album. Toss in Horsegirl and the '90s are back, baby!

I'm having more trouble with this one. Her melodies often don't serve her vocal choices? And with them it matters b/c this band wants you to hear every lyric.

I kinda want to know more what you mean by melodies not serving vocal choices? There is definitely a lot of odd phrasing, as though the lyrics were composed separately from the melodies, then stretched/squeezed to fit. I don't necessarily mind that approach, but I can see how it might be distracting

You said it better.

This band is one of the most head-scratching cases of hype that I can think of, always sounds like mid-90s alternative radio but the bands that were in the dollar/cutout bin a year or two later.

they have amazing moments, and moments that aren't as amazing

i feel Wednesday should be approximately as hyped as Ratboys, and Ratboys should be approximately as hyped as Wednesday ... that seems more fair.

I went back and sampled the new one again and I dislike this band even more than I thought…just very pedestrian musically for lack of a better word and I get the aim of the lyrics but I don’t find it to be a particularly poetic version of “hey remember back in the day when we were just small town suburban kids smoking pot and dreaming of a bigger life” or whatever, more annoying/obvious than touching or insightful. That’ll be my last post in here, I just feel like with everything going on in the world do we have to be building up the wrong music too?

I'm having more trouble with this one. Her melodies often don't serve her vocal choices? And with them it matters b/c this band wants you to hear every lyric.

― hungover beet poo (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Tuesday, September 23, 2025 1:36 PM (three hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

yeah I think she’s just a really limited vocalist