“I saw Wednesday on a Friday night” sounds like the setup to a classic riddle, but don’t be deceived. Fresh off the explosive release of their sixth studio album Bleeds, North Carolina’s resident alternative country band Wednesday stopped in Montreal on Nov. 15 and lit up Club Soda for the evening.
I must admit—I hold a particular bias against Montreal crowds. I saw Kaytranada at Parc Jean Drapeau last year and was shocked to be surrounded by marble statues and frozen corpses. Since then, I have often mourned the freedom to dance as an artifact of the past, an archaic custom dating back to before the self-perpetuated surveillance state of cellphones.
Suffice it to say, I was surprised when, mere moments into Wednesday’s set, an unseen force tugged me forward. A sweaty, dancing mass swallowed me as hundreds of voices joined frontwoman Karly Hartzman in singing “Reality TV Argument Bleeds,” the semi-titular track from Bleeds.
Many listeners held a falsely sweet expectation for Bleeds upon the May release of the album’s first single, “Elderberry Wine.” In this lilting love song—penned like a classic country standard—Hartzman waxes poetic about the thin line between a love that’s just right and one gone bitter. “The pink boiled eggs stay afloat in the brine,” she sings, blending the Appalachian culture of her upbringing with the belief that rotten eggs float. Hartzman wrote the song amid a breakup with Wednesday guitarist and solo artist Jake ‘MJ’ Lenderman, whose playing is featured on the album but who has since been replaced in the tour lineup by Jake ‘Spyder’ Pugh. Anyone noticing a trend? No, me neither.
While other tracks on Bleeds lean towards alternative rock and away from the softer melody of “Elderberry Wine,” the album remains firmly rooted in Hartzman’s memory through regional details. “Townies” reflects the bitter gossip cycle of a small town and shows how people weaponize sexual rumours against young women, as they once targeted Hartzman and a close friend. “Phish Pepsi,” a rerecording of a track on the 2021 Guttering EP, depicts high school loserdom through minute details, referencing Four-Loko-fueled bike rides and a makeshift Pepsi can pipe. In “Wound Up Here (By Holding On),” Hartzman sings about antlers mounted in the kitchen and a dead boy’s jersey hung in a trophy case, two gruesome souvenirs that fade into mundanity. Her lyrics present a sharply realist twist on the southern gothic, deftly illuminating the grotesque in the everyday and finding humour in the dark.
After cycling through a few upbeat tracks, some from Bleeds and others off of previous records, Hartzman paused to introduce the next song, hinting that it was named after the current month. Someone in the crowd exclaimed, “October,” and we all laughed as Hartzman second-guessed herself. After a few jokes about the time-bending properties of touring, the band dove into the soft chords and muffled vocals of “November,” a shoegazey single from their second album. The crowd fell into a trance, gently swaying, eyes alight. We weren’t corpses or statues; we were hypnotized. Just as we relaxed into the lull of the soundscape, Wednesday transitioned into “Twin Plagues,” loud and gritty, and everyone leapt in unison to the heavy Loveless-style drop.
Strangers opened the pit again and again, circles ebbing and flowing. A beanied man crowd-surfed to the stage, hugged Hartzman, and surfed back into the distance. As Wednesday took advantage of the audience’s raucous energy and played straight through their planned encore, I threw myself into the crowd with renewed faith. The writhing mass of dancing bodies didn’t feel anachronistic; instead, the steel guitar and thudding bass ushered the crowd into a new age, fresh branches growing from deep roots.
Good music is alive and well in the hands of Hartzman. Dancing never dies. And it turns out Montreal still knows how to have a good time on a Friday night.
