Wednesday, the North Carolina rock band led by generational songwriter Karly Hartzman, return to Sydney astride their new album Bleeds, one of last year’s greatest. Beloved by fans and critics alike, Wednesday’s southern-fried sound is an intoxicating blend of outlaw grit, place-based poetry and hair-raising noise.
Karly Hartzman — Wednesday’s founder, frontwoman, and primary lyricist — credits the band’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,” Karly has 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.
Just like Rat Saw God, one of the defining rock & roll records of the 2020s so far, Bleeds holds the exact right amounts of country truth-telling, indie-pop hooks, and noisy sludge. Maybe sometimes the best way to locate truth or pain or dignity within your own life story, Bleeds suggests, is by crawling into someone else’s. Karly’s distinct singing voice and its connection to her storytelling has always been at the heart of Wednesday, and her vocal has never sounded sweeter than it does when she’s sentimentalising pickled eggs on the twangy and timeless-feeling “Elderberry Wine”.
Bleeds is a reminder that Karly and her bandmates are exclusively interested in chasing glory through games they invent themselves—games with rulebooks you can only decipher late at night, in that freaky and perfect place between sleep and awake where you’re not sure if you’re dreaming or remembering something that already happened. In this arena of their imagination, the scoreboard’s a neon bar sign, the commentator’s a cicada, the mascot is an eighty-year-old Pepsi addict with no teeth. Wednesday is always World Champion, and the award hanging from Karly Hartzman’s neck isn’t an Olympic gold but rather a heart-shaped pendant—a clunky, rust-stained heirloom with countless funny and fucked-up stories locked safely inside.
Wednesday dominated Best of 2025 lists, with adulation from Pitchfork, TIME Magazine, GQ, NPR, Rolling Stone and made their TV debut with an arresting performance on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert.
“A five-star example of the US crank rock invasion” - THE TIMES
“One of the great rising rock bands” - NPR
“The most exciting band in contemporary indie rock” - Associated Press