Wednesday
Bleeds
Release Date: Sep 19, 2025
Genre(s): Pop/Rock, Alternative/Indie Rock
Record label: Dead Oceans
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Album Review: Bleeds by Wednesday
Very Good, Based on 9 Critics
Based on rating 4.7/5
Wednesday expand their palette even further with yet another masterpiece. Wednesday is a band that has really burst on to the scene in recent years. Their first two albums, I Was Trying to Describe You to Someone and Twin Plagues, were masterclasses on how to take the lo-fi twang of alt-country and mix it with the hazy, reverb-laden guitar leads of shoegaze. Band leader Karly Hartzman, sadboy icon MJ Lenderman and the rest of the crew took a sound that has been done generically ad nauseam and put an atmospheric spin on it.
Based on rating 4/5
Karly Hartzman's knack for the ragged and abrasive on Wednesday's new album Bleeds busts this band through a hole in the 'indie country' boom bucket. Of course, Wednesday have never fit neatly into the confines of that scene, though they will remain constantly in its orbit. But even when they nail a sugar-coated country song, as they do so convincingly on Elderberry Wine, it still has a sour centre.
Based on rating 8/10
The band that nearly bankrupted themselves trying to make a go of it has found more than a modicum of success these days. During the tail end of the Rat Saw God tour, Wednesday's Karly Hartzman was already announcing that their next album was in the can and playing a few songs (the noisy ones) from it as well. Like its predecessor, Bleeds mixes moments of bluster with tuneful ones.
Based on rating 8/10
Formed in 2017, the band released four full-length albums and three EPs before putting out 2023's exceptional Rat Saw God, which saw them emerge as a critical and commercial darlin' -- selling out venues, playing festivals and late night shows, and ending up on numerous year-end lists (including Exclaim!'s), the album's baroque cover somehow perfectly complementing the noisy slacker-country contained within. Now, two years later, the band -- Karly Hartzman (lead vocals, guitar), Xandy Chelmis (lap steel, pedal steel), Alan Miller (drums), Ethan Baechtold (bass, piano) and Jake "MJ" Lenderman (guitar) -- are back with Bleeds, a brilliant, beautiful and brutal album that just may be the band's best. "Reality TV Argument Bleeds" opens the affair with gusto.
Based on rating 8/10
Delicate, alt-country licks are curtailed by noisy blasts of electric feedback, while frontwoman Karly Hartzman candidly recounts memories that sit between angst and sentimentality. Now several albums in, this formula is deeply entrenched, but Bleeds has put Rat Saw God in second place for one thing: The genre disparity between raucous shoegaze and poignant country is no longer too distant. Rarely would Wednesday traverse both modes on the same song, opting for either zero or a hundred on each.
Based on rating 1/10
Wednesday have been on a steady upward trajectory that has thus far culminated in 2023’s Rat Saw God, which is easily one of the best records of the decade--a Southern gothic record that nods to Drive-By Truckers in the lyrics and Jason Molina in the sonics. Simultaneously, guitarist MJ Lenderman's Manning Fireworks, released about a year ago, made his star rise significantly. Although he will still record with the band, he will no longer be touring with them.
Opinion: Excellent
Wednesday's 'Bleeds' is a mishmash medley of Southern indie-rock. The new album presents songs of confession, reflection, wit, heartache and true crime in a new yet distinctive way. 'Bleeds' works as the product of a full-on tour, creating a strong sense of identity as a band, in which Karly Hartzman (guitar, vocals), Zandy Chelmis (lap steel, pedal steel), Alan Miller (drums), Ethan Baechtold (bass, piano) and Jake "M.J." Lenderman (guitar) then channelled into the new album.
Opinion: Excellent
If the timing of 'Bleeds' feels somewhat fortuitous to the outside world (a band called Wednesday releasing a record in the shadow of the brightly-lit spotlight cast by the Netflix series of the same name), then it was seemingly the reverse for its creation. With frontwoman Karly Hartzman's decidedly diaristic writing style, that we're told that most of this sixth album from the North Carolina outfit was written before her split with guitarist MJ Lenderman - then a full member, now at least not a touring one - matters little, as an eerie glumness pervades most of the record that's difficult to avoid tying to the protagonists' real-life timeline. Similarly, the tension created by a shuffle between styles leaves a visible seam each time: a case in point is the wonky, pretty country-lite of 'Phish Pepsi' (featuring the memorable pop culture quip "We watched a Phish concert and Human Centipede / Two things I now wish I'd never seen"), which leads to the indie whisper of 'Candy Breath', where an almost comic timing precedes the line "everyone's divorced".
Opinion: Excellent
From the angry clamor of "Bull Believer" to the genial indie stylings of "Quarry," both from 2023's Rat Saw God, Wednesday thrives on extremes. In a similar vein, the Asheville band's no less fresh and volatile follow-up, Bleeds, veers between well-oiled honky-tonk and aggressive, battered guitar rock, with, for example, the painfully pretty "The Way Love Goes" followed only two tracks later by the screamo assault of "Wasp." The first minute of the album's opening track, "Reality TV Argument Bleeds," is perhaps the most quintessentially Wednesday music to date. A slow crescendo of feedback-ensconced guitar keeps building until Karly Hartzman unleashes a scream and the band finally takes flight on the back of a squealing guitar riff.
'Bleeds'
is available now