Juxtaposition Is The Prescription On Wednesday’s ‘Bleeds’

Wednesday (photo: Martina Gonzalez Bertello)

Bleeds, the fifth salvo from this Dead Oceans-signed, Asheville, N.C.-based indie outfit, is truly the best album of 1994. Who thought it would be so compelling to graft country rock idioms to the relentless decibels of British shoegaze and American grunge and then have the whole cyclone spin around a slacker vocalist? Then again, mediocrity rules the top halves of our pop charts and festival bills, so any hyperbolic verbiage thrown at Wednesday is completely meritous.

Vocalist Karly Hartzman is a casual goddess. There’s not a lot of screamy, throat-shearing catharsis here (barring the 90-second “Wasp”), but her delivery can be plaintive (“Elderberry Wine”) or downright pre-occupied, as if she’s crafting a melody by reading the contents of a cornflakes box with a complete disregard for phrasing or key changes. At any given moment, Hartzman could be singing stridently into the side of a mountain from the porch of an Appalachian cabin (“The Way Love Goes”) or as meandering as an inappropriate drug cocktail captured as a voice memo on an iPhone and thrown in for some credible, indie-rock audio verite (“Carolina Murder Suicide”). At some junctures, you’ll feel embarrassed because you think you’re eavesdropping as she reads her diary.

Hartzman and her bandmates (guitarist/indie-rock bon vivant MJ Lenderman, pedal/lap steel accenteur Xandy Chelmis, drummer Alan Miller and bassist/keyboardist Ethan Baechtold) didn’t fix what wasn’t broken on Bleeds. “Pick Up That Knife” distills that ‘90s quiet/loud/quiet formula to something alternatingly comfy and claustrophobic, while one should try putting “Candy Breath” on a playlist after David Bowie’s “Heroes” and see how that feels. “Gary’s II” could be the opening song for an imaginary Wednesday gig at the Grand Ole Opry – a bouncy little hoedown about how a bar fight leads to dentures and seemingly ends just as the going gets good.

The only thing to genuinely hate about Bleeds is that it exists far and away from the ‘90s zeitgeist by which it was informed. The lyrical details are better than anything that ever came out of Whiskeytown (the “puppy pissing off a balcony” line from “Wound Up Here (By Holding On)”), the volume torture rivals that one time J. Mascis did My Bloody Valentine’s live mix at CBGB, and the whole LP is as great as you wanted Hole to be (sit down X’er, and don’t @ me). Juxtaposition is the prescription and Wednesday are fixin’ to dose you in all the best ways. If there’s any justice in this world, a small but excited number of our great-grandchildren will be talking about this record, the people who made it and how cool real life was – prior to the pointless void of AI.