Wednesday – Rat Saw God

In the late 90s, the Drive-By Truckers (DBT) reinvented southern rock, specifically Lynyrd Skynyrd, with an alternative/indie rock aesthetic – achieving perfection in the early 00s with Southern Rock Opera (2001), Decoration Day (2003) and The Dirty South (2004). The DBT had an insightful take on the modern American South that can be summarized in this lyric:

“Proud of the glory, stare down the shame
Duality of the southern thing”

From the song “The Southern Thing” from 2001’s Southern Rock Opera

Asheville, North Carolina’s Wednesday is updating southern rock for the current decade. Wednesday openly acknowledges their appreciation of the DBT and name-checks the band on Rat Saw Dog’s song “Bath County:.”

“Hittem with a dose of Narcan
Sat right up in the leaned back seat of his
Two door sedan
On the way home, play Drive-By Truckеrs songs real loud
You’ll be my baby ’til my body’s in the ground”

They bring indie rock, grunge, alt-country, and shoegaze to their brand of southern rock. They have also mastered the fine art of melodic-buzz-saw-guitars. I have always been a sucker for melodic-buzz-saw-guitars, for example, Bob Mould (with Hüsker Dü, solo, and Sugar), Smashing Pumpkins, Nirvana, Foo Fighters, The Pixies, etc.

Karly Hartzman, the band’s primary songwriter, also brings a Southern Jewish perspective. She understands the challenges of being Jewish in the South and illustrates it with a novelist detail:

“The kid from the Jewish family got the preacher’s kid pregnant
They sent her off and we never heard too much more about it”

From “Quarry”

At first, I was put off by the squall of guitars, but by song five, I found alt-country comfort in “Chosen to Deserve.” That opened my mind to what the band was doing, and now after listening to the album about ten times, “I get it” and enjoy their point of view. I am intrigued by the stories of dirtbag southern teenagers in the same way as I have enjoyed Springsteen’s blue-collar New Jersey and the Hold Steady’s upper Midwest hood rats. As Steven Hyden’s review points out, the band has a great sense of place.

I thank IndieCast for tipping me off to this album and persuading me to give it a serious try. On my own, I would have never made an effort.

It is great to find a young rock band who, although not shy about their influences, have found their own voice.