Latest news with #KarlyHartzman
The Guardian
16 hours ago
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Arson, sex shops, livestreamed funerals: Wednesday's Karly Hartzman on the wild stories in her southern gothic rock
To step into Karly Hartzman's home is to see the contents of her brain shaken out. There is a fireplace mantel covered in dolls and figurines; a wooden rack filled with cassette tapes; an old doll's house filled to the brim with fabric scraps; a few overflowing bookshelves. As the 28-year-old leader of the indie-rock band Wednesday greets me at the door, she realises a few new additions have just landed through the letterbox, some books about the history of hardcore and punk: she has been listening to both a lot and is eager to educate herself. Hartzman is a collector by nature, a habit that is also at the heart of her songwriting. Equally inspired by the southern rockers Drive-By Truckers and the shoegaze greats Swirlies, Wednesday's sound combines heartfelt twang with walls of pummelling sound. Hartzman's lyrics are highly narrative, inflected with striking, gnarly details. Listen to the band's breakthrough album, 2023's Rat Saw God, and you will hear about urine-coloured soda, roadside sex shops, accidental arson and teens getting high on Benadryl. The band's forthcoming sixth album, Bleeds, refines their sound, never letting the raw noise overshadow Hartzman's knack for melody and unique stories. 'This is what we've been working towards this whole time,' she says. She calls the band's singular sound an 'unavoidable' result of the members' individual tastes. By now, she says: 'We know what a Wednesday record sounds like, and then we make it.' Although Pitchfork declared Wednesday 'one of the best indie-rock bands around', Hartzman keeps a low profile in her home town, the small North Carolina city of Greensboro. She recently moved back from nearby Asheville, where she lived on a bucolic property known as Haw Creek that was home to various local musicians. In person, Hartzman is thoughtful, expressive and more reserved than you might expect from her riotous performances. As we drive around Greensboro, she points out her teenage haunts, such as the cafe she used to frequent when she skipped school. As a kid, she resented being told what to do, but never let that get in the way of an education. 'I was very methodical,' she says about cutting class. 'I was writing and reading and doing work – I was doing my own school, on my terms.' She credits her taste in music to a few crucial sources: her parents, who played Counting Crows and the singer-songwriter Edwin McCain around the house; her older sister, who got her into Warped tour punk (Paramore were an early favourite); and a longtime friend who introduced her to shoegaze and post-hardcore bands such as My Bloody Valentine and Unwound. When she started college, Hartzman admired her friends who played in bands, but she wasn't interested in taking music lessons. Then she saw the band Palberta – a playful indie-rock trio whose members traded instruments every few songs – and felt inspired by the messy, uncomplicated style of playing the three women shared. 'They were doing something that sounded awesome and very easy,' she says. 'After that show, I bought my friend's guitar off him.' Hartzman's earliest recordings were solo; she got a formal band together only when her sister asked her to perform at her birthday party. From there, Wednesday rotated through a few members before settling into a stable lineup: Xandy Chelmis on steel guitar, Ethan Baechtold on bass and piano, Alan Miller on drums and MJ Lenderman on guitar. They started playing house shows and tiny spots with friends' bands and folks they met in local DIY scenes. Wednesday's shows could be raucous, rowdy affairs, but their home lives centred around the quietude of Haw Creek, surrounded by streams and open fields – the kind of place where they could go fishing in the morning, then practice in the living room later on. 'We lived on acres of land,' she says. 'Nothing will ever beat that.' Hartzman lived at Haw Creek with Lenderman who, alongside his work in Wednesday, found meteoric success last year for his fourth solo album, Manning Fireworks. He and Hartzman started dating before Lenderman joined Wednesday – Hartzman was a fan of his music, playing it over the speakers at the coffee shop where she worked before they met. After six years together, they broke up amicably in 2024. Hartzman chalks it up to the usual big-picture differences that emerge in adulthood. In your early 20s, she says: 'You're just like: 'Oh, I like this person, I'll date them.' But then, when you're 28, you have to be like: 'Does this person have the same intentions in life?'' Hartzman was interested in marriage and kids; Lenderman was not quite on the same page, she says. But, from the beginning, 'I've known, even if we're not romantic for ever, we're creative collaborators for ever'. Lenderman will be on future records; while he won't perform on their next tour, Hartzman insists it's nothing personal; between Wednesday and his solo career, his touring schedule has been relentless and 'he needs a break'. The songs on Bleeds were written before the breakup, although some of them hint at the deteriorating relationship. The Way Love Goes started as an apology for not being fully present. 'When I wrote it, I was like: 'But I'm gonna fight for this,'' she says. 'Of course, by the time we recorded it, that was not the situation.' Wasp, meanwhile, describes the bitter self-recrimination she felt towards the relationship's end. 'My body just kind of gave up on me,' she says. 'I was really dissociated because I didn't want to break up, but I was having to accept that we needed to.' Bleeds is haunted by images of loss and violence: a washed-up body, a livestreamed funeral, a car crash, a knife fight. Hartzman doesn't see it necessarily as a dark record; she sees it as chasing good stories and telling the truth. 'Death is around at every point,' she says. 'If you don't acknowledge that, you're lying.' She is drawn to mixing the cartoonish and the creepy: 'I think that's just a southern gothic attitude,' she says, describing her taste as 'a little bit scary, but there's a heart of gold underneath'. Much of Hartzman's songwriting draws on her memories of youthful debauchery, like sneaking out late then teaching Sunday school. She is also a keen collector of stories, keeping an eye out for strange characters and unbelievable happenings. 'If someone has a story where they're, like: 'Oh my God, this was so embarrassing,' or: 'This is kind of a secret,'' her ears prick up. (She always asks for permission and changes names and identifying details to protect the innocent.) From Bleeds, the drowning victim on Wound Up Here (By Holdin' On) comes from a friend's story from his days as a rafting guide in West Virginia; Carolina Murder Suicide was inspired by a true-crime podcast. But Hartzman's songs still feel intimate, told in first person through a singular lens, treating their subjects with compassion. Rat Saw God took the band to new heights, landing on many publications' year-end lists. But as she looks towards the release of Bleeds, Hartzman is committed to keeping her personal life steady. It helps that while 'the shows have changed a lot' – getting bigger and bigger – 'my life at home has been so consistent'. This year, she ditched her smartphone, got off social media and built herself a charmingly retro, Y2K-style personal website. The apps were zapping her focus; then, a profile of Lenderman was published with details of their breakup. 'People were putting their own two cents on that shit,' she says with an eye roll. 'I was like: oh, it would feel so good to get off that.' She has changed how she listens to music, too, jettisoning the algorithm to favour recommendations from friends and blogs. 'It's been so rewarding.' On her site, she shares monthly journal entries and roundups of the music and media she is enjoying. She answers reader-submitted questions about everything from learning guitar to her relationship with religion. She also has a PO box where listeners can send letters; she replies to as many as she can. It's important for her to be in touch with the people who love her music, she says, and she wants to give them something special. But this method represents, for her, a 'closeness on my own terms' – a way of preventing the always-on burnout faced by many musicians on the rise. Her ability to tune out industry pressure surprises even those closest to her. Lenderman 'is always wondering: 'How do you not feel that kind of pressure of expectation?'' she says. 'But my need to write is so important to me, more than any reception.' As well as making her own merch from customised thrift store T-shirts, in her precious downtime, Hartzman has been writing and spending time with local friends – they are fond of a laundromat-cum-bar called Suds & Duds. She has never lived outside North Carolina – and doesn't plan to. 'I love it,' she says. 'It feels like home to me. And that feeling is addicting.' Folks here know her face because they watched her grow up, or grew up alongside her, not because her band recently played The Late Show (although she did get recognised recently by a Wednesday listener at her grandmother's retirement home). Most of what happens in her songs 'could happen anywhere', she says. 'I'm not trying to say, necessarily, that I had a different upbringing or lifestyle than most teenagers.' But she is telling her story truthfully – 'and, in reality, it happened here'. Hartzman understands why other artists might move to a major city to find artistic success, but she is glad to be rooted in such a distinctive place. 'I don't like the feeling of: 'I'm in the cultural centre of the universe and what I do here will pervade the rest of culture,'' she says with a shrug. 'I like the idea of coming in from the edge.' Bleeds is released via Dead Oceans on 19 September
Scoop
2 days ago
- Entertainment
- Scoop
Wednesday Announce New Album 'Bleeds'
Wednesday announce their anticipated new album, Bleeds, due 19th September via Dead Oceans. With Bleeds Wednesday present an intoxicating collection of narrative-heavy Southern rock that—like many of the most arresting passages from the North Carolina band's discography—thoughtfully explores the vivid link between curiosity and confession. Bleeds i s a patchwork-style triumph of literary allusions and outlaw grit, of place-based poetry and hair-raising noise. Karly Hartzman —founder, frontwoman, and primary lyricist—credits Wednesday's tightened grasp on their own identity to time spent collaborating on previous albums, plus a tour schedule that's been both rewarding and relentless. 'Bleeds is the spiritual successor to Rat Saw God, and I think the quintessential 'Wednesday Creek Rock' album,' Hartzman said, articulating satisfaction with the ways her band has sharpened its trademark sound, how they've refined the formula that makes them one of the most interesting rock bands of their generation. 'This is what Wednesday songs are supposed to sound like,' she said. 'We've devoted a lot of our lives to figuring this out—and I feel like we did.' 'Wound Up Here (By Holdin On),' released today alongside a video by Joriel Cura, is a perfect example of this alchemy. "This song is inspired by a story my friend told me, from when he had to pull a body out of a creek in West Virginia. Someone had drowned but they took a few days to resurface because of the current,' Hartzman explains. ''I wound up here by holdin on' is a line from my friend Evan Gray's poetry book: Thickets Swamped in a Fence-Coated Briars. He gave me and Jake a copy of it to read on tour once and that line stuck out to me as pure genius so I stole it and wrote the rest of the song in my own words around it." Last month the band shared 'Elderberry Wine,' a twangy and timeless new single, to wide critical praise that included being named 'Best New Track' by Pitchfork, one of 'The Best Songs of 2025 So Far' by TIME Magazine and praised by The Guardian in their playlist as a 'pedal-steel-sweetened heartwarmer'. The band performed the track and made their television debut on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert upon its release. Just like Rat Saw God, one of the defining rock & roll records of the 2020s so far, Bleeds came together at Drop of Sun in Asheville and was produced by Alex Farrar, who's been recording the band since Twin Plagues. Hartzman again brought demos to the studio, where she and her bandmates— Xandy Chelmis (lap steel, pedal steel), Alan Miller (drums), Ethan Baechtold (bass, piano), and Jake 'MJ' Lenderman (guitar)—worked as a team to bulk-up the compositions with the exact right amounts of country truth-telling, indie-pop hooks, and noisy sludge. More than ever, the precise proportions were steered by the lyricism—not only its tone or subject matter, but also the actual sound of the words, as well as Hartzman's masterfully subjective approach to detail selection. BLEEDS TRACKLISTING: 1. Reality TV Argument Bleeds 2. Townies 3. Wound Up Here (By Holdin On) 4. Elderberry Wine 5. Phish Pepsi 6. Candy Breath 7. The Way Love Goes 8. Pick Up That Knife 9. Wasp 10. Bitter Everyday 11. Carolina Murder Suicide 12. Gary's II
Yahoo
2 days ago
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Wednesday Return With ‘Elderberry Wine,' a Love Song About Finding That ‘Delicate Balance'
It's only fitting that Wednesday returns on a Wednesday. The indie rockers are back with the new single 'Elderberry Wine.' The track opens with Karly Hartzman's razor-sharp lines ('Aint heard that voice in a long time/Had to check back there to make sure you were alive'), with MJ Lenderman on backing vocals and guitar. Xandy Chelmis rounds it out with cozy lap steel, making it a warm welcome back for the band. More from Rolling Stone the Beaches, Wet Leg, MJ Lenderman to Headline Rolling Stone's Rock & Roll Tour 'Wednesday' Returns to the Scene of the Crime in Season 2 Teaser Jenna Ortega Left 'Scream 7' Because It Was 'Falling Apart' After Melissa Barrera Was Fired ''Elderberry Wine' is about the potential for sweet things in life (love, family, success) to become poison if not prepared for and attended to correctly,' Hartzman explains. 'Elderberry is known as a healing fruit, and is an ingredient in many tonics and syrups to aid the immune system. One time, however, my sister consumed them raw and it immediately induced vomiting. So 'Elderberry Wine' is ultimately a love song about creating just the right environment for fulfillment. There's a delicate balance that needs to be created, especially in love, for two lives to intersect without poisoning each other.' The video above opens with a man driving to a bar, where Hartzman is serving drinks. He's eagerly watching a horse race, until Hartzman changes the channel to the band performing the single, resulting in him mouthing, 'What the fuck?' According to director Spencer Kelly, the video was shot at the Bench in Greensboro, North Carolina, the city's second-oldest bar. 'We came in with some specific scripted scenes, but we wanted to capture the bar as authentically as possible, so everyone you see in the video is a regular, including Karly's dad, George,' he said in a statement. 'This video is a bit of a love letter to places like this, where the sense of community runs deep and the beers are always cold.' 'Elderberry Wine' marks Wednesday's first new music since their 2023 breakthrough album Rat Saw God. The band (Hartzman, Lenderman, Chelmis, Alan Miller, and Ethan Baechtold) will perform the single this evening on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, making their television debut. Wednesday will hit two festivals this year: Project Pabst on the weekend of July 26 and Best Friends Forever on the weekend of Oct. 10. But amid his massive solo success with his recent LP Manning Fireworks, Lenderman will no longer be touring with the band. He told GQ that his last show with them was on Jan. 4 in Chiba, Japan; he and Hartzman broke up during that tour. In that same interview, Hartzman spoke about the band's new music, recorded after her split with Lenderman. 'I was numb during those sessions. I had to be,' she said. '[Lenderman] and I had written so many songs about each other and our relationship over the years, including these, and I just needed to get them out.' Best of Rolling Stone The 50 Greatest Eminem Songs All 274 of Taylor Swift's Songs, Ranked The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time
Yahoo
2 days ago
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Wednesday Preview New Album With Gothic Teenage Tragedy ‘Wound Up Here (By Holdin On)'
It's Wednesday yet again, which means it's only right for North Carolina indie–rock favorites Wednesday to drop a new song, 'Wound Up Here (By Holdin On),' and announce their next album, Bleeds, will be out Sept. 19 via Dead Oceans. Following the breezy alt-country single, 'Elderberry Wine,' 'Wound Up Here' highlights Wednesday's heavier alt-rock side with moody, atmospheric verses building into big riff choruses. In a statement, Karly Hartzman said the song was inspired by a story a friend told her about the time he 'had to pull a body out of a creek in West Virginia. Someone had drowned but they took a few days to resurface because of the current.' More from Rolling Stone 2025 Americana Awards Nominations: Charley Crockett, MJ Lenderman, and More Wednesday Return With 'Elderberry Wine,' a Love Song About Finding That 'Delicate Balance' the Beaches, Wet Leg, MJ Lenderman to Headline Rolling Stone's Rock & Roll Tour The accompanying lyrics are appropriately eerie and unsettling, but with a touch of dull realism. 'Found him drowned in the creek,' Hartzman sings on the first verse. 'Face was puffy/They hung his dirty jersey up in a trophy case/Next to his girlfriend in a picture with a varsity face.' As for the song's chorus — 'I wound up here by holdin on' — Hartzman said she borrowed the line from a piece in her friend Evan Gray's poetry book, Thickets Swamped in Fence-Coated Briars. '[T]hat line stuck out to me as pure genius so I stole it and wrote the rest of the song in my own words around it,' she said. Both 'Wound Up Here' and 'Elderberry Wine' are set to appear on Bleeds, which follows Wednesday's acclaimed 2023 album, Rat Saw God. The album was recorded at Asheville's Drop of Sun Studios, with longtime producer Alex Farrar at the helm again. Hartzman recorded the LP with bandmates Xandy Chelmis, Alan Miller, Ethan Baechtold, and Jake 'MJ' Lenderman. (Though he plays on the record, Lenderman will no longer be touring with Wednesday.) Wednesday will hit the road in support of Bleeds this fall, with the run kicking off Oct. 9 in Santa Fe and wrapping Nov. 21 in Washington D.C. Tickets are on sale now, with full info available on the band's website. Track List1. 'Reality TV Argument Bleeds'2. 'Townies'3. 'Wound Up Here (By Holdin On)'4. 'Elderberry Wine'5. 'Phish Pepsi'6. 'Candy Breath'7. 'The Way Love Goes'8. 'Pick Up That Knife'9. 'Wasp'10. 'Bitter Everyday'11. 'Carolina Murder Suicide'12. 'Gary's II' Best of Rolling Stone Sly and the Family Stone: 20 Essential Songs The 50 Greatest Eminem Songs All 274 of Taylor Swift's Songs, Ranked
Associated Press
2 days ago
- Entertainment
- Associated Press
The world according to Wednesday, your new favorite alt-country indie rock band
NEW YORK (AP) — A pit bull puppy peeing off a balcony. Mounted antlers in the kitchen on a crooked nail. Pink boiled eggs stay afloat in the brine. For its dedicated audience, the North Carolina alt-country-meets-indie rock band Wednesday is an exemplar in evocative songwriting, where whole worlds are found in short lyrical lines. 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.' So, let the bloodletting begin. ___ 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.'
