Top Album of 2025: Bleeds by Wednesday

In the wake of MJ Lenderman’s meteoric rise with Manning Fireworks, the fate of the Asheville-based noise / shoegaze / alt country rockers was uncertain. On tour for Rat Saw God (Wednesday’s highly acclaimed 2023 album), Lenderman (lead guitar) and Karly Hartzman (singer, guitarist, and principal song-writer) called off their six-year relationship between shows in Japan. When they returned home, they set to work recording Bleeds without telling the rest of the band, and still sharing their old house. It’s Fleetwood Mac’s Rumors in indie-rock form — and it’s breathtaking.

The album is imbued with the pain of the crumbling relationship, punctuated with dark stories of revenge and murder, as well as hometown lore. Hartzman’s songwriting is her finest yet and sung with a southern yowl. Lenderman’s emotion surges through his guitar on searing southern rock riffs and walls of sludgy sound. Xandy Chelmis on pedal steel floats serenely in the slower songs and is a haunting layer beneath the noise on the louder ones.

“Reality TV Argument Bleeds”, opener and quasi-title track, sets the tone of an insidious rot — “Walk over the wet boards of a wooden bridge / When I don’t feel like bein’ comforted” and Lenderman’s guitar wails. “Townies” and “Wound Up Here (By Holding On)” feature some of the album’s best lyrics and sense of place to muggy North Carolina summers — “Then you sent my nudes around / I never yelled at you about cuz you died.” There are softer songs “Elderberry Wine,” “The Way Love Goes,” and “Carolina Murder Suicide” mixed in with the louder ones, similar to the variation in Rat Saw God. The album flows between them, drifting from rage to depression, from yelling to crying. “Pick Up That Knife,” a southern rock tune, drops seamlessly into headbanger “Wasp.” My favorite track on the album is “Bitter Everyday,” a Dinosaur Jr.-esque track featuring Lenderman and Hartzman both at their best. “To you it’s just like swimming through a cold spot in the lake.” The album closes on Gary’s II, a bit of town gossip that serves as a sequel to a track from Twin Plagues. It’s sheer brilliance.

Attempting to define Wednesday’s genre exactly (as I did earlier in this review) is difficult. There are walls of sound, fuzz-drenched guitar, folksy story telling, a Southern Gothic aesthetic. The band themselves describes themselves as “creek rock” and it seems quite fitting. It’s a mash of Drive-By-Truckers, Dinosaur Jr., Sonic Youth, My Bloody Valentine, Lucinda Williams. It’s entirely their own.

Lenderman doesn’t tour with Wednesday anymore, though he remains a member of the band. In concert, it’s Hartzman’s show, Hartzman’s audience — from the gentle sway of “Elderberry Wine” to the phrenetic mosh pits of “Bull Believer.”

Honorable mention: Welcome to My Blue Sky — Momma