Review: Wednesday at The Orange Peel

A homecoming show in Asheville is a truly fun thing to see, and on July 1, local shoegaze indie rock quintet Wednesday got to enjoy all the good energy the locals could muster at The Orange Peel on the final stop of its recent world tour. The group, having coalesced only a few years back and building a local following on the backs of DIY shows before drawing critical acclaim and far flung fans, showed true appreciation for the hometown scene and confirmed why they deserve a place on the big stage.

Who is Wednesday? It’s a fair question, especially for a band with as swift and steep an arc as this one. They have only been on my radar for the last few months after a few people dropped hints steering me their way. One of those people was Patterson Hood of Drive-By Truckers, who told me in an interview in April: “We fucking love them, man. They're great. They're a fantastic band. They're great live and their new record [Rat Saw God] is so far my favorite record this year. It's a really kick-ass record.”

That’s the kind of endorsement that’s hard to ignore, as are write-ups in Paste, Pitchfork, Rolling Stone, and more. DBT dug Wednesday’s sound — a cavalcade of moody slow burns, kaleidoscopic distortion, and winding alt-country odes wrapped around the backbone of frontwoman Karly Hartzman’s tender (read: raw) lyrics — so much so that they took the band on tour with them. So did indie rockers Beach Bunny, giving Wednesday their first taste of The Orange Peel stage as openers back in 2022.

Even if the leap from house shows to larger national and international crowds may still bewilder the group — Hartzman acknowledged as much to the Asheville audience — it didn’t show, and the band delivered a roundly enjoyable and enlightening performance, proving they can captivate a room like The Orange Peel while still seeming like a group of kids you’d see milling around at Battlecat Coffee Bar.

The tour, Hatzman said, was “the hardest thing we’ve ever done,” and engendered a round of applause for the band’s van for topping 300,000 miles on the journey. The 26-year-old would continue to pepper the show with asides to the crowd, giving shout-outs to fellow UNCA graduates, while lead guitarist Jake Lenderman called out for a show of hands from Asheville High alum who may have been in the same classrooms as band members. In almost all ways, the members of Wednesday came off like they were just like the rest of us — like they could as easily have been in the crowd instead of onstage.

In almost all ways, that is. Because when they got to playing music, they came out in full force, showing a solid command of both the stage and a style they have cultivated that defies easy classification yet is inherently engrossing. In the first three songs alone, Wednesday proved two things: First, Hartzman’s solid songwriting and the reeling pedal steel from Xandy Chelmis can sometimes absolutely land them in the alt-country back forty.

On their very first song of the night, “Chosen to Deserve” from Rat Saw God, Hartzman’s lyrics — the kind written alone on the floor in true country spirit — have the same kind of heart and exposure that could have come out of Lucinda Williams: “We always started by tellin' all our best stories first/So now that it's been awhile/I'll get around to tellin' you all my worst/ Just so you know what you signed up for/What you're dealin' with/Just so you know what you've been chosen to deserve.” Debate me if you want to, but this is a country song. And I have none other than Paste Magazine to back me up — they put Rat Saw God on their list of 70 greatest alt-country albums of all time, and at number 16 no less. So even better, debate Paste Magazine.

But anyway, here’s the second thing: There is a lot more going on here. I mean, to fit neatly alongside both Beach Bunny and Drive-By Truckers, there would have to be, right? So pull out “Chosen to Deserve” and the wonderfully wandering “Formula One,” and even a crunchy cover of Gary Stewart’s “She’s Acting Single (I’m Drinking Doubles)” and what have you got left?

Like I said — a lot.

Wednesday can rock, building tapestries of sound around in the air and then pulling them down with discordant stairway tumble deconstructions led largely by Lenderman, a wildly creative musician who also writes and performs as MJ Lenderman. He’s got the technical skills, for sure, but his talent lies also in his choices, and several times throughout the show, beginning with its second song, “Toothache,” Lenderman surprised me with the directions he took his guitar playing. Those dives into slippery fuzz shoegaze that truly let the band air out were skillfully supported by Alan Miller’s drums and Ethan Baechtold’s bass, and they all seemed to be standing shoulder to shoulder as they leapt into several musical freefalls.

Then there is Hartzman’s scream, which began in earnest about halfway into the show on the otherwise indie-poppy song “Bath County,” solidifying that number’s buildup as it rose into twirls of noise rock. Hartzman has an unvarnished, almost deadpan singing voice, and she lets it break into sort of sighing moans, which serves well the world she writes about. But she can unleash, too, and she does it from somewhere deep. Onstage, you could see her get ready for it, eyes closed, leaning back from the mic, her shoulders hunching as she took in the breath that was going to erupt in full-tilt rage or desperation — or both.

In between the ballads and the bellows, Wednesday conjures up a lot of musical forebears – the loud-quiet-loud of Pixies; the anti-gravity tilt-a-swirl of My Bloody Valentine; the ‘90s adoration of Courtney Barnett; and even the backwoods ruckus of Meat Puppets — but the delivery is unmistakably theirs. There is not much genre worship stopping Wednesday from doing what they want, and in going from the readily accessible “Chosen to Deserve” to the near sludge of “Twin Plagues” in just four songs, Wednesday defied the pigeonholes and displayed the range of what they have on their minds.

Likewise, the band is not concerned much with the strictures of verse-chorus-verse structure, giving the compositions whatever they need to embrace one thought. When it is over, it is over — and songs like “Handsome Man” and “Cody’s Only” kept me on my toes, wrapping up in just over two minutes at the tip-top of their build up.

Then there is “Bull Believer,” the 8-minute, 45-second crushing beast of a song that Wednesday saved for their denouement. And any pensiveness or sideline observations Hartzman may have written from were out the door on this one, and the singer invited the expectant audience to get into the mix.

“Scream with me at the end,” she said. “It feels really good. This is the last song of the tour. Anything you need to get out, get it out here.” Then Wednesday threw everything left in them into the song’s churning, resounding maelstrom as Hartzman reached deeper and deeper to scream higher and higher until the notes ran out and the white noise dissolved and sent the crowd away buzzing.

There are dozens of “Wednesday is on their way” stories out there, and that’s a very cool thing to see about an Asheville band, but shows like this one also point me toward how much solid music there is in this town — in house shows, in small venues, in basement studios. I don’t say that in any way to diminish the great music Wednesday is making, only as a reminder to try and catch as many as you can. This one band Wednesday that I only just heard about was playing in those places just a few years ago. Who’s playing there now? Don’t miss them while they are here.

(Photos by Justin Bowman)