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B i o g r a p h y
(by Mark Deming)
Blending
the great fuzzy guitars of shoegaze with a faint Southern twang and lyrics
fixated on the traumas of small-town life, Wednesday are an indie rock band from
Asheville, North Carolina led by songwriter, vocalist, and guitarist Karly
Hartzman. The group's songs manage to be deeply personal while touching on
doubts and anxieties that are universally recognizable, and after launching
Wednesday as a solo project with 2017's I Was Trying to Describe You to Someone,
Hartzman transformed it into a full five-piece band on 2021's Twin Plagues, with
a fuller and more evocative sound. After signing with the noted indie label Dead
Oceans, Wednesday's music became bigger and more emotionally powerful on 2023's
Rat Saw God. 2025's Bleeds gave their music a clearer production without
blunting the emotional impact of their songs of love and conflict.
Karly Hartzman was born and raised in Greensboro, North Carolina. Her parents
encouraged her to use music as a creative outlet when she was young, and her
father gave her a ukulele when she was in middle school. Hartzman taught herself
to play the uke, and she would later follow suit with guitar and other
instruments, eager to make music but uncertain of how to make that happen. After
graduating from high school, where she would often ditch class to spend time
writing and drawing, Hartzman moved to Asheville to enroll in college, and she
took a more serious approach to music as she soaked up the influences of punk
bands, noise rock, and country radio. In 2017, with help from friends at a
campus recording studio, Hartzman cut an album's worth of songs under the group
name Wednesday, a play on the British dream pop act the Sundays. I Was Trying to
Describe You to Someone was a fusion of dream pop, indie rock, and shoegaze, and
she initially gave it a low-key digital release. As she plotted her next move,
Hartzman joined the band Diva Sweetly as lead singer, whose style leaned more
toward pop-punk than the more dramatic sound of her own music.
While Diva Sweetly began enjoying regional success, Hartzman wanted to focus on
her own music, so she recruited a band to revamp the Wednesday concept. Joining
Hartzman were lead guitarist MJ Lenderman, lap steel guitarist Xandy Chelmis,
bassist Margo Schultz, and drummer Alan Miller. After the Chicago-based Orindal
label gave I Was Trying to Describe You to Someone a vinyl reissue in 2020,
Wednesday's new lineup started work on an album, and Orindal issued Twin Plagues
in 2021. The indie music press took notice of the album, and as Wednesday's
popularity grew in the United States and England, they self-released a nine-song
EP, Mowing the Leaves Instead of Piling 'em Up, featuring covers of tunes by
Roger Miller, Chris Bell, the Drive-By Truckers, Vic Chesnutt, and others. 2021
also brought Guttering, a six-song EP credited to MJ Lenderman & Wednesday, that
was self-released by the group. Dead Oceans, the successful indie label whose
roster included Japanese Breakfast, Phoebe Bridgers, and Akron/Family, struck a
deal with Wednesday to release their next album, and with producer Alex Farrar
(Snail Mail, Suki Waterhouse, Archers of Loaf), the group cut their third album,
2023's Rat Saw God, their hardest and most dynamic effort to date. In June 2025,
the independent Julia's War label reissued the Guttering EP, making it available
on vinyl for the first time. Around the time Guttering was re-released,
Lenderman announced he would no longer be touring with Wednesday as he focused
on the demands of his solo career. As Wednesday put the finishing touches on
their next album, Hartzman revealed in interviews that her romantic relationship
with Lenderman had come to an end, and the emotional fallout of love on the
rocks provided subtext to 2025's Bleeds. The album featured a cleaner production
that sharpened the emotional and musical dynamics of the interplay between
country-influenced ballads and raw, noisy rock. |