Wednesday, live at at the metro theatre 3/6/26

Alize Viner and Lucy Horton mow the leaves …

Alize

With Sydney hearing Bleeds, Wednesday’s 2025 album, live for the first time, it felt fitting for the band to kick off the concert with a passionate rendition of the first track ‘Reality TV Argument Bleeds’. Swells of buzzy guitars and twangy vocals filled the room of transfixed listeners. 

Karly Hartzman stood front and centre, a beacon of energy and surging passion. With the power to both transfix and rile up a crowd, she moved seamlessly and instantly between soft, dreamy vocals and visceral screams, sending the audience into a frenzy. The legendary Xandy Chemlis on pedal steel provided the band’s signature alt-country twang, and refused to let his seated position stop him from fiercely headbanging. Next to them: bassist Ethan Baechtold, drummer Allan Miller and lead guitarist Jake “Spyder” Pugh, who stepped into, and definitively filled, the shoes of beloved former guitarist MJ Lenderman.

The band had a sweet synchronicity like a pulsing heartbeat, connected through every ebbing and flowing dynamic shift. As we screamed “They’ll meet you outside!” in the cathartic outro to ‘Pick Up That Knife’––engulfed in fuzzy, dissonant guitar wails and dripping in sweat––the mosh pit pulsed in waves of yearning and solidarity.  

As we screamed “They’ll meet you outside!” in the cathartic outro to ‘Pick Up That Knife’––engulfed in fuzzy, dissonant guitar wails and dripping in sweat––the mosh pit pulsed in waves of yearning and solidarity.  

But the intensity of Wednesday’s performance and the crowd’s reciprocation didn’t stop them from checking in on our safety: “Y’all be careful of squashing the people on the barricade…..What’s happening here? Has someone lost a phone?” One of the most striking things about Wednesday’s persona as a band was how genuine, authentic, and down-to-earth they were. With four songs to go, Hartzman warns the crowd that there will not be an encore, insisting that this tradition is insincere––and besides, her voice will be gone after pouring everything into the next few songs. 

Wednesday’s honest, lyrical storytelling sheds light on America’s dark political climate, failing social systems, and the bittersweet landscape of the South. They shared their political frustrations with the audience and voiced solidarity with Australians grappling with the conservative One Nation Party’s recent polling. The crowd instantly launched into a heated chant of “f*ck  Pauline!” Though rather than getting blindsided by negativity, the band had one simple message for us: If our worst nightmares come true, and One Nation takes power, the one thing we must do is stick together and advocate for those who don’t have a voice. 

Wednesday’s honest, lyrical storytelling sheds light on America’s dark political climate, failing social systems, and the bittersweet landscape of the South.

The concert came to a poignant close with ‘Wasp’, an explosion of fiery emotion. Hartzman’s melancholic, almost child-like cries paired with the all-encompassing shoegaze guitar sounds and fiercely headbanging crowd to give us the best Wednesday night we’ve ever had.

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Lucy

My entry point to Wednesday was actually their 2022 cover album Mowing the Leaves Instead of Piling ‘em Up, which washes the clean-cut mixes of ‘Perfect’ (The Smashing Pumpkins, 1998) and ‘Sacrifice (For Love)’ (Greg Sage, 1991) with a weighty melancholy that feels like walking through Asheville’s freezing rain. Across their discography, if there’s one thing they do, it’s ride the soft-loud train all the way to its destination (here, perhaps, Mullumbimby: the final stop of the Australian leg). 

If there’s one thing [wednesday] do, it’s ride the soft-loud train all the way to its destination … Mullumbimby: the final stop of the Australian leg.

You hear this in ‘Fate Is… ‘ and ‘Hot Rotten Grass Smell’: spurred on by the band early in the setlist, the inklings of a push pit become fully-fledged in the centre of the Metro Theatre. Together with ‘Wound Up Here (By Holdin’ On)’––which Karly dedicates to the two or three North Carolinians in the crowd––they form a bit of a godhead of ‘countrygaze’ (I only hear My Bloody Valentine‘s ‘Only Shallow’ in ‘Hot Rotten Grass Smell’’s bridge). Piercing feedback bleeds into the pre-chorus, then a breakdown of a chorus, of Wednesday’s take on Gary Stewart’s ‘She’s Actin’ Single (I’m Drinking Double)’ in probably my favourite track of the night.

‘Countrygaze’ has swung into my world at such a speed and to such a depth that I feel incredibly lucky and incredibly tardy in saddling the Wednesday horse. Its denotation here, on my part, as something momentary and neatly-portmanteable is no doubt contrived, but maybe it’s just the company I’ve fallen into. Before the show, my boyfriend’s friend raves about his Facebook Marketplace lapsteel guitar find, and they together holler their love for (at?) “Xandy [Chelmis, pedalsteel player]!” But Wednesday have been around since 2017, and their latest offering in Bleeds (2025) represents an on-brand, but evolved, mix of the twangy, spritely, tender, and grungey, from ‘Phish Pepsi’ to ‘Wasp’. It continues what Hanif Abdurraqib identified in Twin Plagues (2021): songs that tend to hold two or three songs within; ‘ballads until [they] begin to threaten a storm of volume’.

Their latest offering in Bleeds (2025) represents an on-brand, but evolved, mix of the twangy, spritely, tender, and grungey, from ‘Phish Pepsi’ to ‘Wasp’.

In another multifaceted way, the beauty of Wednesday is that I can’t tell where they slot into the lives of the folks around us. As I run to cloak my bag a third of the way through the show, I weave through flanelled fathers and half of the local emo (emotional hardcore, that is) scene. Tonight’s melting pot of life stories and joint mobility and generic preferences adulterates one way or another––in softness or brashness––what you hear in studio recordings as you clean your room or drive around. ‘Elderberry Wine’’s tenderness is jolted by the moshpit’s urgency, punching in enunciation more than swaying, but I’m not disappointed. The show was a perfect length, and the apex of its energy in ‘Townies’ toward the end was more than enough to ruffle, fluster, and invigorate; waxing, waning, keeling, and twanging.