Reviewed by Ian Phillips.
By Wednesday, Orindal Records 2021.
Wednesday is a rock band from North Carolina USA that I came across on Bandcamp and they have just released the first single, Handsome Man, from their upcoming album Twin Plagues which is due for release on August 13.
The single is excellent and if it’s representative of the album the extended play should be worth getting hold of.
Handsome Man opens with a great building guitar riff before lead singer Karly Hartzman’s vocals herald a quieter period.
The song ebbs and flows with the signature riff reappearing and building to mini crescendos, each time taking us to a new, but different, beginning.
There’s a Britpop feel to the track, particularly in its shades of dark and light and changing pace.
This suggests that the band have focussed on the whole package; getting the song’s structure and feel right, highlighting melody as well as the lyrics, and making sure that each time the trademark hook arrives it propels the song forward and adds another dimension.
I have only heard Handsome Man but reviewer, Hanif Abdurraqib, who has heard the entire album and reviews it on Bandcamp, speaks in glowing terms about the band’s attention to the craft of song writing.
He suggests that the band often write songs that contain mini songs within them and that is certainly the case with Handsome Man.
The song takes the listener on a journey, something that many songwriters fail to achieve.
You will know the songs I’m referring to; the ones that, after the first 20 seconds you’ve heard the entire song.
If you’re like me, you find yourself drifting off through lack of stimulation.
Hanif suggests that Wednesday’s mastery of song structure means that album tracks like Cody’s Only “start as a ballad before it begins to threaten a storm of volume, and then in its final act it becomes something else altogether.”
Another example is One More Last One starts as a “shoegaze-y trip that swells and swells until it overflows but doesn’t stop… it just keeps on offering and offering and offering.”
Handsome Man has certainly whetted my appetite for the album which I’ll review on its release in the meantime give this single a listen.
By the way the album will be available on cassette too!
