Thanks! I Hate It – Scatterbrain | Album Review

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Take This To Heart Records

I haven’t been doing well. Frankly, I don’t think any of us have been. Burnout nips at my heels like a dog. I meet my own bleary gaze in the mirror each morning, blinking until the light hurts my eyes a little less. I follow the same routine, finding some small comfort in its familiarity: mediocre coffee scooped into my French press, damp hair in a towel, concealer and blush pressed into my sheet-marked skin. I pick an album to soundtrack my commute, hesitating between an old favorite and something new. I decide to try the new album. And so goes the day: a series of choices, ever the same, varied only slightly by my responses to them. 

Scatterbrain, the sophomore album from Central California rockers Thanks! I Hate It, speaks directly to the burnout and dissolution we’ve all been wrestling with. Poignant lyrics sung by vocalist Sam Hogan are braided with glittering hooks and immaculate fills, melding the band’s fifth-wave emo sound with sharp insight on navigating millennial adulthood. For the most part, Scatterbrain iterates on the band’s excellent (and under the radar) 2023 LP Lover’s Lane. Throughout the record, guitarists Ryan Jansky and William Loomis ignite the songs with prickly Midwest fireworks while bassist Joel Chandler and drummer Ryan Loomis pack catharsis into every moment of the instrumentals. Their discography is filled with tongue-in-cheek song titles like “Meatwood Flack” and “Disney Bland.” In true emo tradition, they’re goofy and lighthearted names that offer no hint of the emotionally weighty lyrics beneath.  

This theme is continued on Scatterbrain: the opening track is titled “LeatherFACGCE,” a clever mash-up of the fabled Texas Chainsaw Massacre killer and an emo-favorite alternate guitar tuning. An immediately catchy drum groove and tightly winding guitar riff draw the listener in as Sam sings, “Water doesn’t heal everything / But today we can forget about the past / Iced tea and lemonade / You hate it when I try to dig around in your head.” The track speaks of a relationship that the speaker refuses to give up on, even though they acknowledge it’s getting more difficult to do so: it feels one-sided, with Sam singing that, “I’m doing overtime to let you know what’s on my mind / but oxygen gets harder to find.” 

The captivating hooks and energetic, yet honest, lyricism continue onto “Sunrise Over Mt. Doom,” which is one of my favorite tracks on the album. I love Lord of the Rings (Aragorn fans, rise up), and on first listen, the title of the song immediately got my attention. Over classic pop-punk chord progressions and melodic earworms, Sam admits that they’ve been whiling the days away unproductively. However, this honest confession is tinged with hope, looking ahead to a brighter future despite the current bleakness.

I spend my time on the wrong things
Mostly unemployed
I wait to see what tomorrow brings
Oh what else can I avoid?
And I know I know
It’s not gonna last forever
And I know I know
It gets better.

In The Lord of the Rings, Mount Doom is the volcano in Mordor where the One Ring was forged. The parallel of the song title is clear: Mt. Doom is a dark and hopeless place, full of foreboding, but a sunrise shining above it is a symbol of hope. Samwise says to Frodo in The Two Towers: “But in the end, it's only a passing thing, this shadow. Even darkness must pass. A new day will come. And when the sun shines, it'll shine out the clearer.” And so both Sams are right: it will get better from here.

As I’ve gotten older, I’ve learned how intertwined boundaries are with peace. I am a (mostly) recovered people pleaser, but getting used to putting my health and time first has been a journey. I still have to mentally work myself up to saying no to someone, even when I know I’m burned out. On lead single “Butterfly Tattoo Effect,” T!IHI tackle this subject, commenting that “I don’t want to waste time / I don’t want to ruin my life.” Saying yes to everything and everyone is more destructive than anything – if all your time is spoken for by others, your life isn’t really your own anymore, it’s theirs. Sam sings that “I never felt the future / Mattered till I got a chance to make it myself / So I say / Oh well / For once, I learned how to say no.” As I traverse my third decade of living and make my future, I’ve finally learned to say no too. 

Sometimes, though, setting those boundaries leads to resentment from people who liked you only because you said yes to them. The album’s closing track, “Tonight’s the Night You Fight Your Dad,” is an honest examination of such a relationship: Sam admits that, “I think you like me better when I’m being a sponge.” Standing up for yourself to a family member or friend is never easy. It’s a relief to passively take criticism or arguments instead of pushing back. Honesty can feel like you’re a salmon battling upstream, facing a waterfall that threatens to crush you. But living itself is a relentless experience, and peace exists only because it is the opposite of conflict. Facing these difficult conversations can be done graciously, and loving people with whom you disagree is a part of life. Sam notes, “I still like being around you / I don’t let it bother me too much / I’m careful in the way that I’m receiving your love.” Sometimes, self-preservation can look like holding the ones you love at arm’s length.

Later on Scatterbrain, the energy briefly mellows on “Detractor Supply.” A soft and thoughtful opening leads into a satisfyingly dense atmosphere, building the end into a sudden explosion of circle pit energy – the band fakes a quiet ending, then blasts into a joyous chorus of gang vocals and furiously precise drumming from Ryan Loomis. “Break it up and break it down / We’re gonna turn this life around / There’s no more wishing, no more wanting / No more patience, no more longing.” It’s a powerful and emotive moment: my skin pricks with goosebumps and I yell along to the lyrics with all the air in my lungs. T!IHI prove they can move the listener with more than just poetry. From razor-sharp tempo changes to tawny harmonies, the band communicates emotional highs and lows throughout the entire album. Not only is it gorgeous, it’s damn impressive, too. 

It’s supposed to rain in a few hours. The sky is ominously cast in deep grey, and I can smell the water on the breeze. My shoulders feel a little less heavy. Perhaps there is some relief in routine: one foot in front of the other, a series of choices to make. Even the familiar can be sacred. Scatterbrain is a relatable and beautifully comforting ode to being human and finding the light of hope in our darkest seasons. I close my eyes and let the first few raindrops brush my face.

Britta Joseph is a musician and artist who, when she isn’t listening to records or deep-diving emo archives on the internet, enjoys writing poetry, reading existential literature, and a good iced matcha. You can find her on Instagram @brittajoes.

The Beths – Straight Line Was A Lie | Album Review

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Anti

It’s no secret, at least to The Beths, that human experience isn’t linear. The New Zealand pop rockers are far from the first to make this observation: Buddhist philosophy talks about Samsara, the cycle of birth, death, and existence that’s fueled by desire. Also called “the wheel of suffering,” Samsara can theoretically be escaped. But don’t ask me, or The Beths, how!

The band’s fourth album, Straight Line Was A Lie, kicks off with the title track, a treatise that hinges on the admission, “Guess I’ll take the long way / ‘Cause every way’s the long way.” Crunchy guitars circle around a verse and bridge; no chorus, just a recursive mantra. The fuzz gives way to sweetness on “Mosquitoes,” the second track, showcasing the soft side of frontwoman Elizabeth Stokes’ voice and songwriting. Throughout the song, she reflects vividly on a flood that wrecked her favorite local creek, grappling with impermanence and loss in the process. However, the reflective moment soon gives way to the up-tempo drums and thrumming bass of “No Joy,” a nod to The Beths’ power-pop past. On it goes throughout the track: fervor and tenderness, slow and fast, light and dark, back and forth, around and around. Indeed, as the album’s title forecasts, there is absolutely no straight line to be had here—and in light of life’s complexities, why would there be?

It’s not easy, making sense of *gestures to everything* All This. I won’t waste too many words talking about how much sorrow there is and how futile it all feels. Everyone I know—I am not even exaggerating—is reckoning with some kind of impossible misery right now, even if it’s just the struggle of surviving in this nightmare country. As for myself—well, I’m trying to move forward, to move on, but my life feels like it ended in 2023, and that cruel year just won’t loosen its awful grip on me. In fact, it’s lately felt like the more I thrash, the tighter it digs in. Perhaps if I knew how to loosen up, lighten up, I could shake off some of the pain. Three steps forward, two back, instead of the other way around. Salvation comes from letting go; otherwise, you’re stuck. Like the title track says: “I thought I was getting better, but I’m back to where I started / and the straight line was a circle, yeah the straight line was a lie.”

It makes sense that to be light and free, holding onto nothing and no one, would solve this problem of suffering. Like, I get why the Buddha said that. Unfortunately, it just doesn’t feel practical for me, a person who loves to get attached to everything.

In the album’s penultimate song, “Ark of the Covenant,” Stokes reckons with her dark side over brooding chords and an urgent drum tempo. “If I go digging, I’ll never stop,” she frets, worried that introspection will only lead to deeper misery. Is there a way to excavate these cursed artifacts safely, to sap them of their power? 

In the wake of The Beths’ beloved third album, Expert In a Dying Field, Stokes was prescribed antidepressants. She sought a way out of life’s difficulties; what happened instead was that she stalled out: unfulfilled and unable to write music as creatively as she had before. Slowly, though, she and her bandmates pushed through, and the process itself (and all its extrapolations into their personal relationships) became the subject matter. “So you need the metal in your blood,” a chorus of background vocals chants in the album’s second single, “Metal.” 

Stokes said she and the band intentionally avoided keyboards on Straight Line, a move that proves crucial to the album’s success. With her bubblegum voice and the band’s easygoing melodies, an Alvvays pastiche could have been an obvious route, but, as illustrated throughout the album, the band wasn’t interested in taking any shortcuts. Instead, they turn the dial up on bouncy bass riffs, lively drums, and chiming guitar tones that almost sound like a harpsichord on “Roundabout.” We get caught in these recursive riptides, yes, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t press forward, continue hacking through the jungle. 

Grit is the key to Straight Line Was A Lie. “I wanna ride my bike in the rain / I wanna fly my kite in the hurricane,” Stokes sings in the middle of the record on “Til My Heart Stops.” So you found yourself back where you started, or stuck in a rainstorm. What are you going to do about it? Perhaps for some of us, the response to suffering isn’t to fade out, but to double down. And that doesn’t have to mean the toxic kind of clinging that fuels Samsara; conversely, it might mean deciding what’s actually worth saving in the midst of life’s wreckage. 

Nowhere is this wreckage more evident than “Mother, Pray For Me,” a crushing choice for a pre-album single and my favorite song on the record. It’s not easy to sit with the paradox of a loving but difficult relationship, much less put it into words, but The Beths have done it here. “I cried the whole time writing it,” Stokes says, though in the spirit of the album, her persistence paid off. Softly underscored by organ chords, she offers up six verses and a bridge asking for the seemingly impossible. Despite the song’s title and mantra, it’s not her own salvation that she seeks. The bridge goes:

I called off the search
For evidence of an after
Decided I'm fine without
Forever is this right now
But one day, if you arrive
Just send me a small sign
I don't need the proof of place
Just tell me you got there safe

If there’s a heaven, a nirvana, it’s in what we share with those we love. It’s not a destination we arrive at; it’s a prayer we say for each other again and again. 

Before her final entreaty to her mother’s intercession, Stokes confesses, “I never know what to say anyway.” I disagree. I think she’s hit the nail on the head.

Katie Hayes is a music writer and karaoke superstar in Austin, Texas. She is from there, but between 2010 and now, also lived in Lubbock, TX, Portland, OR, and a camper. Her life is a movie in which her bearded dragon Pancake is the star. You can check out her Substack here, and some of her other writing here. She’s writing a book about growing up alongside her favorite band, Paramore.

Aren’t We Amphibians – Parade! Parade! | Album Review

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PNWK Records

It took five years of living in New York for me to finally make it to the ever-elusive Trans-Pecos, but one show there was all I needed to understand the venue’s popularity. The 250-cap room is situated on the border of Brooklyn and Queens – technically part of Ridgewood – and sits right next to a Vietnamese restaurant, only a stone’s throw from the Halsey St. stop on the L train. Last year, I ventured from my apartment on a cold November night to catch a now-otherworldly bill of emotional rock bands, including the local rockstars in better living., Japanese act ANORAK!, legendary New Jersey headliner Ogbert the Nerd, and an introduction to the California-based rock outfit Aren’t We Amphibians. As if that lineup wasn’t enough, that gig was the cap to a weekend packed with fantastic shows: I caught Cloud Nothings and Equipment tearing up Baby’s All Right on Friday, then watched saturdays at your place headline Market Hotel the night after. The pure excitement led me to create a playlist called “Last Weekend Changed Me” and, as emo music often does, I was changed.

Aren’t We Amphibians have found a lot of love in the DIY circuit throughout their short tenure as a band, thanks to their infectious energy and reliable output of consistently great music. Formed by vocalist/guitarist Joshua Talbot and brothers Brandon and Tyler Cunningham on drums and bass respectively, the San-Diego trio has put out two EPs and a couple of splits, including one earlier this year with awakebutstillinbed, california cousins, and your arms are my cocoon. Give it a handful of years, and I guarantee this split will be considered a classic entry in a genre with a long lineage of historic four-way splits.

All of this is to say my hopes were quite high when rumors of a 2025 release for Aren’t We Amphibians’ debut full-length started bubbling up, and it finally arrived in the form of Parade! Parade!. The ten-track record sees the group move forward with effective midsong tempo switches and Talbot’s high register belting the most depressing lyrics you can imagine, this time with even more anthemic sing-alongs. Take the opening track, “Rock, Etc.,” which initially paints a portrait of a morbid future as the first lyric lays out, “This time next year, I won’t be still around.” However, the track blossoms into a triumphant declaration of “I’m here right now,” alongside hard-hitting guitars and trumpets, transforming a moment of helplessness into a symbol of hope within four simple words.

Throughout this record, there are multiple instances where Talbot writes lyrics that practically beg to be screamed along to in rooms full of people who are also, for lack of a better term, going through it. Talbot cries out, “I’ve said a thousand times that I never want to be anything but small” in the track “532.” There’s also the incredibly sorrowful cut “The Hallway,” which kicks off with a slower guitar passage before progressing into an explosive guitar pattern alongside the repeated lyric “I think I’d be better off if I never existed at all.” Now that’s what I call emo.

It’s not only the lyricism that feels incredibly raw and heartbreaking: many of the instrumental choices have a sense of constructed impulsivity to them. While they might seem abrupt on first pass, there’s a free-flowing ease between the hallmark time signature switches in the lead single “Dunce Hat,” almost like Aren’t We Amphibians are identifying new paths of communicating what needs to be said in real time. This high level of musicianship makes it easy for the group to pull it off multiple times without ever feeling so far out of left field that the listener gets disoriented. There’s also a personal favorite, “Forgiving Jeff,” which boasts some amazing guitars shifting from throttling to methodical at the drop of a hat, all accompanying the ultra-earnest mantra “Take this to heart,” which I have found myself screaming every time I throw this song on.

Throughout the album, Talbot articulates the pain of feeling stuck while everyone around you seems to be growing up. His ability to shift from singing to passionate cries to flat-out screams, multiple times in the same song, works in tandem with the ever-evolving instrumental passages. A brilliant example of this can be found in “Family on 6,” which erupts into a straight-up screamo passage, accompanied by an explosion of guitars and drums, as Talbot screams “I never learn from my mistakes” at the top of his lungs. It’s easily one of the craziest moments in an already fast-paced record.

What keeps this album glued together, both in terms of sonic and thematic value, is the idea of the parade. The first bits that we hear come from the horns in the opening track, and they make bolder appearances on tracks such as the laid-back “Bookworm,” where the band pairs the brass alongside some acoustic guitar passages. On the flipside, the album’s second single, “This Is Teamwork!,” sees the trumpets placed right before a hardcore-inspired breakdown. It’s always fantastic to see an emo band put together more of these non-traditional instruments into a record, especially when its use becomes a cornerstone of what the project represents.

The real centerpiece of Parade! Parade! comes at the end with the de facto title track “Parade,” cued up by a (shocker) parade-style intro. The song launches into a powerhouse guitar riff, with lyrics that focus on turning everything you have been through into a celebration of the person you are now. The group pulls through with a slower passage as Talbot sings “When the street is empty / after the parade / just take it all in / and feel everything,” extending an invitation to be a human again throughout the suffering. 

These parades that Aren’t We Amphibians speak of might not be that far away from you. While one might not catch a line of countless people cheering and screaming to the sound of music in the streets, you can certainly find them in music venues large and small. There’s something about the safety of being surrounded by people who all have the same love of music that brings you back to life after navigating through the hostile environment outside of the venue. At the end of the opening track, a radio broadcast says the words, "Let's talk about rock and roll, let’s talk about concerts, let’s talk about banging your head,” almost like a personal invitation to the celebration. We’re all going through it, so you may as well recognize everything you’ve overcome. If you are ever in doubt, take yourself out to the gig! There’s a chance you could be changed like I was back in November of last year.

The optimism throughout the pain is what keeps Parade! Parade! from being a downtrodden, melancholic emo project and instead cements it with a nuanced mood. There’s hope throughout all of the craziness, no matter what you are going through. There’s a joy that comes with being in the same room as a bunch of strangers who all have the same love of music, and we certainly feel it all once we step outside of those rooms. It’s hard to progress without hope, so why not celebrate all you have accomplished whenever you can? 

Samuel Leon (they/he) is a Brooklyn-based performance photographer, playwright, and retired performer. Sam writes plays about music but not musicals. Sam doesn’t like using the internet, but they will if they have to. If you are even remotely close to Brooklyn and want Sam to make you look cool on camera, hit them up on @sleonpics.

Equipment – First time using slang | EP Review

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Brain Synthesizer

In recent years, I’ve found myself growing tired of the increased reliance on nostalgia that seems to hold up a lot of the art being released into the world. I definitely understand the desire to move back to a more familiar time and place, particularly when we’re facing so much uncertainty and myriad anxieties, but too often it feels lazier than it does compelling. This all said, I don’t think the allure of nostalgia should be ignored entirely in the creative process, because it’s still a viable tool and, when done right, can really fucking hit. 

First time using slang, the latest EP from Ohio-based punk band Equipment covers so much ground in its quick, yet impressive thirteen minutes. “GLOVES” gets things moving with a fuzzy, heavy riff and repeating lines, “she only wears gloves inside.” Straight out of the gate, this EP feels so incredibly tight, relying mainly on instrumentation and textures to fill out this deceptively uncomplicated opener. The way the colors in the melody shift with each reprisal of the main line results in a stellar, catchy punk track that has a repeat listenability I’ve very much come to associate with Equipment after falling hard for their two most recent singles, “espresso lemonade” and “tequila redbull.”

“LAB COAT” is the track that sticks out for me the most in this collection, drawing you in with one simple guitar line that starts as a modest acoustic riff, playfully swings around to electric, then comes back in full force like a punch to the face… But like, if for some odd reason you really wanted a punch in the face. With lyrics that specifically call out “listening to bands from ‘03,” this track is a perfect example of Equipment’s ability to harness the mystical powers of nostalgia while still keeping things fresh as fuck. The vocals like warm butter in the first few seconds, the bouncy, playful rhythms, the brutally honest and relatable line “Guess I grew out of utility / I’m entitled to my mediocrity" – it all hits. Also, Rainier Beer mentioned. 

It's rare to see a band employ the use of a musical suite in an EP, let alone one of this particular genre. Seeing a 7-plus-minute song wrap up an EP in the emo and punk genres is more than welcome to my Coheed-loving-ass, and each piece of “FACIAL PROTECTION” flows like water. It’s contemplative, pensive, and over in a second if you just let it wash over you. “Ensnaring” is the word I keep wanting to come back to, because that’s precisely what these melodies, rhythms, and guitar lines are excelling at. The three movements of this final track deploy three unique approaches, but each arrive at the same spot – wrenching, melancholic mysticism. 

I’ve very much come to love the cadence that Equipment is delivering their music – releasing singles and EPs when they have the material that they know will land, and obviously having a preference for quality over quantity. From the minute I listened to this EP, particularly the standout track “LAB COAT,” I knew this release was going to be one to shine as we reflect on the releases of this year. There’s just enough familiarity to rope you in while the Quippiness™ of it all keeps you smashing that replay button. In an era where nostalgia is often used as a crutch, Equipment is using it as any other weapon in their arsenal. 

Ciara Rhiannon (she/her) is a pathological music lover writing out of a nebulous location somewhere in the Pacific Northwest within close proximity of her two cats. She consistently appears on most socials as @rhiannon_comma, and you can read more of her musical musings over at rhiannoncomma.substack.com. 

Wednesday – Bleeds | Album Review

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Dead Oceans

As a ride or die Wednesday Warrior for nigh on half a decade, the appeal of Bleeds feels entirely self-evident to me. As I’ve been spinning the countrygaze band’s sixth album throughout the summer, it was both comforting and easy to see connective tissue from all across their discography. Lead single “Elderberry Wine” is a fully-fledged country-fried love song whose sound was telegraphed by the band’s twangy Tiny Desk and Gary Stewart covers. Follow-up single “Wound Up Here (By Holding On)” assured audiences that this record wouldn’t be all sweetness and champagne bubbles, evoking the crushing desperation of 2021’s Twin Plagues between lyrics about a dead body washing up in a creek. If that song wasn’t angry enough for you, “Pick Up That Knife” is a searing (and funny) track where minor inconveniences and offhand interactions escalate to violence, bile, and self-inflicted lashings that collectively evoke 2023’s breakthrough Rat Saw God. Throughout it all, Wednesday crystallize the one-of-a-kind sound they’ve been honing since their inception, resulting in a brilliant collection of songs without parallel or compromise. 

Even if you pick up Bleeds as a complete outsider, the transportive property of the opening song and de facto title track “Reality TV Argument Bleeds” should be enough to convince you of the band’s power. Much like “Hot Rotten Grass Smell” combined sensory language, clever references, and a shit-kicking dustbowl riff to drop the listener somewhere in the wilds of North Carolina, “Reality TV” begins with a slowly mounting beat that utterly transfixes. Drums, bass, and feedback from multiple guitars all coalesce, falling in sync and growing louder until a scream erupts from bandleader Karly Hartzman, piercing through everything as the band rips into a soaring guitar riff. 

The first words we hear on the record are a gross-out glimpse of devotion as Hartzman sings, “Pickin’ the ticks off of you.” This visual, which feels like a sister lyric to a Samia song from earlier this year, is immediately undercut with a dismissive brush-off of “If you need me I’ll call you.” In the next verse, she paints a picture of being separate, observing something from one room over as she sings, “Reality TV argument bleeds / Through the floor when I go to sleep.” This speaks to the kind of observationalist approach that Hartzman takes throughout these songs, always watching, listening, and reassembling pieces of life into the music we hear on record.

As the song melts outward, we get brief snapshots into isolationist recoiling, blown engines, and some unnamed other’s “broke dick sincerity.” Ever the way with words, this first song disarms, enthralls, and reassures all at once, offering a three-minute foray into the world you’ll be inhabiting for the next 30-some-odd minutes. But not to worry, keep your hands inside the ride, and Wednesday will be more than happy to be your tour guide through the heartbreak, distortion, and sweltering southern heat. Welcome to Bleeds. 

Reckless, self-destructive behavior fueled by youthfulness, boredom, or some combination of the two has long been a cornerstone of Hartzman’s writing. Previous tracks like “Birthday Song” and “Chosen To Deserve” are clear-eyed dirtbag anthems that hinge on the universal experience of making stupid decisions throughout your youth. As the songs recount high school acid trips, pure-hearted trespassing, and innocent-enough public urination, Hartzman looks back with surprising honesty and compelling empathy. While others might think back to their teenage exploits and cringe, Wednesday codify them into song and allow others to learn from their mistakes. Hell, even if you’re not learning anything, the small-town antics enrapture like getting caught in a good conversation at the local dive bar. 

The second track on Bleeds, titled “Townies,” is the latest in this long line of diaristic entries, acting as something of a spiritual successor to “Chosen To Deserve.” Opening with a light-hearted sway that immediately clears the air, the lyrics build a backdrop of local characters eager to supply drugs, leak nudes, and generally take advantage of the women naive enough to trust them. In Hartzman’s own words, the song is about “my friend in high school who got a rumor spread about her that she gave a handjob to a guy under a desk during AP English (which she later told me was true after I told her I wrote this song).” The track thrives in the murky waters of bumbling high school sexual experiences, specifically how callous both men and women can be in that environment, pressuring you while simultaneously shaming you for your choices. 

There’s a surprising amount of sympathy extended to everyone involved, which is revealed gradually as the band peels things back layer by layer. By the end of the song, Hartzman admits, “I get it now / You were 16 and bored and drunk / And they’re just townies…” which trails off until the band brings back the seismic riff one more time, amplified tenfold, and the only catharsis or closure to be had at this point. 

Similar scenes of teenage debauchery play out on “Phish Pepsi,” a re-recording of a song off Guttering that recaptures the original’s hazy, lo-fi sound and even retains the guest feature of Owen Ashworth from Advance Base. Finding herself back in a familiar place, a carpeted floor gives Hartzman a flashback to the last time she was here in middle school and rode her bike home drunk off a Four Loko. One of the album’s best punchlines comes in the song’s final verse, where our hero recounts, “We watched a Phish concert and Human Centipede / two things I now wish I had never seen.” Each word is lovingly mirrored by Ashworth, who adds his baritone sentimentality to every syllable. The dual narrator approach brings a level of sympathetic humanity to the whole thing, as well as the sense that our narrator isn’t in this alone. 

🎄🎅Christmas Sidebar 🎁🎄

Thanks mainly to this feature from Ashworth, “Phish Pepsi” feels like a fun parallel to a cover of “Christmas Steve,” which MJ Lenderman and Karly Hartzman contributed to a compilation for Dear Life Records titled You Were Alone: An Owen Ashworth Almanac. In the original Advance Base song, Ashworth tells the (fictional) story of his cousin Steven, who took too much LSD one fateful Christmas Eve back in 1993 and is now “always kind of Christmassy.” This is far from the first holiday song to come from that project, but it is a nifty little ditty which Lenderman and Hartzman spin out into a stompy freak folk jam with charismatic ad-libs. For the Santa Heads at home, there’s also a second Christmas name-drop later on in Bleeds, making it the highest percentage of holly jolly energy in the band’s discography. 

🚫🎁Christmas Sidebar OVER 🙅‍♂️🎅

After a middle gauntlet made up of singles like “Wound Up Here” and “Elderberry Wine,” the true heart of the record lies in track seven, “The Way Love Goes.” Much like “How Can You Live” before it, this song is a plainspoken reflection of romance that’s deceptively simple but designed to throttle the life out of you. Over a solemn guitar strum, Hartzman rattles off heart-crushing lines like “Feels like I’m almost good enough / To know you” and talks about how a relationship can glacially shift from an overt or implied promise into something that feels consistently underwhelming and disappointing for both parties. Halfway through, Xandy Chelmis’ ever-reliable pedal steel emerges to accompany the confessional. After all the anger, tension, ups, and downs, the song arrives at an honest assessment of affection, with Hartzman cooing, “I know it’s not been easy / And I know it can’t always be / And that’s the way love goes.” Whew. 

On the other side of this emotional downpour, “Pick Up That Knife” is there to help pull us out of the mire. With lyrics of throwing up in a Death Grips pit and iconic one-off lines like “One day, I'll kill the bitch inside my brain,” this feels like a song tailor-made for meme pages or novelty bumper stickers. The repetitions of “They'll meet you outside” eventually give way to “Wasp,” a raging hardcore song that the band has been playing live for over a year already. Kicking off with a righteous flurry of a drum fill from Alan Miller, “Wasp” sees the band going full-tilt hardcore with Karly screaming the whole time, resulting in a cathartic outpouring of fury and indignation that rivals the outro of “Bull Believer.” 

As the album enters its final leg, “Bitter Everyday” offers one last respite before a final gut punch. Gnarly lyrics of razor blades on water slides accompany a carefree guitar riff and tequila-swilling music video depicting a day spent out on the lake – the ideal kind of summer activity when you live in a place as hot as North Carolina. As sweetly as it’s all delivered, the lyrical throughline is nothing short of harrowing, as Hartzman lays out abject depression with lines like: “Abundant things in life keep getting fewer every day.”

What’s left on the other side of that pontoon boat adventure is a four-minute slow-burning ballad depicting a “Carolina Murder Suicide” with haunting fragility. As the house burns and collapses under its own weight, our narrator reflects on the transient nature of everything. It feels like a sun setting as the embers glow into nothingness. 

But then there’s one more song. 

Closing track “Gary’s II” isn’t just a sequel to the penultimate Twin Plagues song; it’s a true story and an exuberant ode to Gary King, the beloved owner of Haw Creek, the artist commune outside of Asheville where this band (and many others) spent their nascent years collaborating and honing their sound. King was similarly memorialized all throughout Colin Miller’s Losin’, but here he is painted in a charming light with a free-wheeling country song meant to serve as a palate cleanser from the otherwise devastating lyrics strewn throughout the rest of the record. The track tells one of the most direct stories in any Wednesday song, framed by plucky pedal steel and a rickety jug band momentum. The whole thing ends with a cutesy wink and a joke so good that it feels like a spoiler to include it here, so I’ll just leave that for you to hear yourself. 

In my summer spent listening to Bleeds, I’ve been massively impressed with the shape of this record and the way everything flows. The band seems to have consciously returned to the headbobbing seesaw riffage found throughout Twin Plagues, and I’m over the moon about that. Sometimes things bend into more of a Rat Saw God storytelling direction, and elsewhere they point to a yet-untaken territory in the rocky wilds of the country music genre. 

In many ways, Bleeds feels like the purest distillation of Wednesday’s sound. They know when to build things up and when to come crashing down; when to shoot you full of adrenaline or drawl the music out for maximum impact. Throughout it all, Hartzman’s lyrics are as astute and funny and relatable as ever, offering up a fresh platter of charming idioms and painful memories that are guaranteed to be lodged in the brains of indie music fans for years to come. As the band opens a portal into their own “sicko world,” the listener feels a welcome sense of recognition, and, for 37 minutes, is lucky enough to be a small part of it, even if just as a slack-jawed onlooker. 

As someone who has spent the last two years living in North Carolina, I can attest to the region’s mystical power and otherworldly pull. My time spent there was a menagerie of soul-centering beauty, valiant people, nourishing relationships, and guiding moments. It’s a part of the country capable of precious stillness and abrupt violence. I’ll put it this way: after the years spent living in North Carolina, I can see why David Lynch decided to film Blue Velvet there. 

As Wednesday weave together a patchwork of the mundane and profane, death and love exist in a perpetual dance, coexisting in the space between the rest stops, gas stations, and kudzu. Somewhere among the Cookout signs and quarries, this group found each other and came together to capture one minuscule splitter of a life still being lived. When listeners catch a glimpse of themselves in Hartzman’s songwriting, it can feel either like a warped funhouse mirror or a comforting salve. Maybe both. Above all else, the writing throughout this band’s discography feels like an affirmation to slow down and observe. To pause and remember. To document, archive, and share – because you just might find your people in the process. I’m already the type of person who believes there’s as much beauty in the sunrise over the ocean as there is in the alley with garbage juice trickling toward the drain. The only difference is, are you willing to look for it? After you’ve built up this reservoir of emotions and memories and stories, you might find yourself feeling similarly to the beginning of this record: simmering upward until it erupts from you in a great cacophony of noise. Whatever comes next is anyone’s guess.