Photo by Zachary Chick

Though there is a newfound concise nature within Wednesday’s alt-country navel-gazing that’s turning heads the way of the Asheville rockers’ anticipated fifth studio effort, Rat Saw God, the inverse of stylistic clarity is that which resonates deeper spells just as well as they do on the album’s late-blooming highlight and closer, “TV in the Gas Pump”. Something is in the air here of this listen, drifting through eye-view and ear-length almost like an orb visiting the scenery beneath it, fascinating by the mundane. Guitarist and vocalist Karly Hartzman is lyrically obtuse in her descriptors of walking through a daze of rural life, right down to the Dollar General, Panera Bread and Starbucks as her words sway along the wavy moves guitarist MJ Lenderman, bassist Margo Schulz, drummer Alan Miller, and multi-instrumental lap steel pro Xandy Chelmis create as a near-molecular particle moving between cohesion and gentle bubble burst against tints of sunlight, hot street haze, and oxygen swirling around them. Perhaps that gas pump is leaking or maybe it’s the caffeine high, but Wednesday make the everyday wallpaper of life sound like something worth sinking deeper into.

Directed by: Approved

Wednesday’s Rat Saw God will be released April 7th on Dead Oceans.