Rock
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Lizzy McAlpine’s “Ceilings” reigns on Billboard’s Alternative Streaming Songs chart for the first time, lifting to the top of the March 25-dated survey.
It’s McAlpine’s first Billboard No. 1.
In the March 10-16 tracking week, “Ceilings” earned 8.8 million official U.S. streams, a jump of 9%, according to Luminate.
The track rules Alternative Streaming Songs in its sixth week on the chart after debuting at No. 23 on the Feb. 18-dated list.
But the story of “Ceilings” didn’t start there. The song was initially released in April 2022 on McAlpine’s second studio album, Five Seconds Flat.
“Ceilings” grew on such shortform video services as TikTok in late 2022, eventually debuting at No. 26 on the Hot Rock & Alternative Songs tally dated Jan. 28, 2023.
The song reaches a new No. 5 high on that chart’s latest edition, with its U.S. streams joined by 1.3 million radio audience impressions (up 111%) and 1,000 downloads sold (up 5%).
Being promoted to radio, “Ceilings” is drawing airplay on pop, adult pop, alternative and adult alternative formats.
Concurrently, “Ceilings” returns to the all-format Streaming Songs chart at No. 39 and leaps 80-54 on the Billboard Hot 100, both new best ranks.
Five Seconds Flat places at No. 6 on Americana/Folk Albums and No. 15 on Top Alternative Albums and has earned 133,000 equivalent album units to date.
Ryan Hadlock, Dan Darmawan and Tyler Smyth are Billboard’s No. 1 rock producers on the latest March 25-dated rankings, thanks to various hits on the Hot Rock & Alternative Songs, Hot Alternative Songs and Hot Hard Rock Songs charts.
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Ryan Hadlock Leads Rock & Alternative Producers
Hadlock tops the all-rock-genre Rock & Alternative Producers chart for the first time, thanks to his work on Zach Bryan’s “Something in the Orange,” of which he’s the sole credited producer.
“Orange” stands at No. 2 on Hot Rock & Alternative Songs after spending six weeks at No. 1. The song marks Hadlock’s second leader on the chart, after The Lumineers’ 18-week No. 1 “Ho Hey” in 2012-13. He’s also produced chart hits for Blond Redhead and Vance Joy.
“Orange” hit No. 10 on the all-genre Billboard Hot 100 in January.
Dan Darmawan Rules Alternative Producers
Darmawan hits No. 1 on the Alternative Producers chart for the first time, thanks to two production hits on Hot Alternative Songs, both of which are by newcomer d4vd. The tracks, “Romantic Homicide” and “Here With Me,” rank at Nos. 4 and 5, respectively, and mark Darmawan’s first chart appearances as a producer.
“Romantic Homicide” reached No. 33 on the Hot 100 in October, while “Here With Me” reached No. 60 in February.
Tyler Smyth Continues Run Atop Hard Rock Producers
On Hard Rock Producers, Smyth scores a 25th week at No. 1, thanks to two production credits on the latest Hot Hard Rock Songs chart, both of which are by Falling in Reverse: “Watch the World Burn” (No. 3) and “Voices in My Head” (No. 7).
Dating to the Hard Rock Producers chart’s launch, only Greg Kurstin has spent more weeks on top (34 weeks).
Billboard launched its Hot 100 Songwriters and Hot 100 Producers charts, as well as genre-specific rankings for country, rock & alternative, R&B/hip-hop, R&B, rap, Latin, Christian, gospel and dance/electronic, in June 2019; alternative and hard rock joined in 2020, along with seasonal holiday rankings in 2022. The charts are based on total points accrued by a songwriter and producer, respectively, for each attributed song that appears on the Hot 100. The genre-based songwriter and producer charts follow the same methodology based on corresponding “Hot”-named genre charts. As with Billboard’s yearly recaps, multiple writers or producers split points for each song equally (and the dividing of points will lead to occasional ties on rankings).
The full Hot 100 Songwriters and Hot 100 Producers charts, in addition to the full genre rankings, can be found on Billboard.com.
The Woody Guthrie Center announced on Thursday (March 23) that Pussy Riot will be honored with the 2023 Woody Guthrie Prize later this spring.
The ceremony is set to take place on May 6 as part of the Tulsa, Okla.-based center’s 10-year anniversary celebration. Pussy Riot members Masha Alyokhina and Nadya Tolokonnikova will accept the award from the late folk music legend’s daughter, Nora Guthrie, inside Tulsa’s Cain Ballroom before they and their bandmates perform their latest multimedia show, titled Riot Days, for the first time in the U.S.
“It feels fitting to be awarded in the spirit of Woody, I think he would love Pussy Riot’s anti-fascist message,” Tolokonnikova told Billboard after the news was announced.
“As artists who, like Woody Guthrie, have the courage of their convictions, there are nocontemporary artists more worthy of this recognition than Pussy Riot,” added Woody Guthrie Center director Cady Shaw in a separate statement. “They have paid a very personal price for speaking theirminds on the most serious issues of our time, yet they continue to fight for justice and freedom.”
According to a release, the Woody Guthrie Prize is “given annually to an artist who best exemplifies Woody Guthrie’s spirit and work by speaking for the less fortunate through music, film, literature, dance or other art forms and serving as a positive force for social change.” Over the last decade, the honor has also been bestowed upon the likes of Bruce Springsteen, Mavis Staples, John Mellencamp, Kris Kristofferson, Joan Baez, Norman Lear and more.
Earlier this month, Tolokonnikova also helped raise nearly $7 million for relief efforts in Ukraine by partnering with UkraineDAO on an NFT of the besieged country’s flag in the midst of its ongoing war with Russia.
Forget Ozempic, or the Hollywood 48-hour miracle diet. If you really want to get superstar fit, Coldplay singer Chris Martin suggests you do what he does: listen to The Boss. In his case that’s 73-year-old miracle of biology Bruce Springsteen, from whom Martin has learned a very important diet tip.
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“I actually don’t have dinner anymore,” Martin told Conan O’Brien on this week’s episode of the former late night host’s podcast, Conan O’Brien Needs a Friend when O’Brien asked what important lessons the singer has learned from meeting, and breaking bread, with so many of his rock idols. “I stop eating at 4 [p.m.] and I learned that from having lunch with Bruce Springsteen.”
O’Brien, in his best Springsteen grunt, joked, “what happened? You were having lunch with him and he said, ‘after this NO MORE! That’s it!’”
Martin explained that he got to share a mid-day meal at home with Bruce and wife/bandmate Patti Scialfa the day after Coldplay performed in Philadelphia earlier this year, which is where the rock icon known for his age-defying stamina during sometimes three-plus-hour concerts dropped a few pearls of diet wisdom on his young charge.
“I was on a really strict diet anyway,” Martin continued. “But I was like, ‘Bruce looks even more in shape than me’ and Patti said he’s only eating one meal a day. I was like, ‘Well, there we go. That’s my next challenge.’” They both had jokes about what that one meal is, with O’Brien suggesting it was an 8-foot-long sub sandwich and Martin matching his punchline by revealing that it’s an entire buffalo.
“And then you see it’s this giant vat of beef chili,” O’Brien chuckled. “The chef came out and said, ‘today we have flank of buffalo with a steroid sauce,’” Martin quipped.
Martin will keep burning those calories on Coldplay’s massive Music of the Spheres world tour, wrapping up the current South American leg with a run of shows at Estadio Nilton Santos Engenhao in Rio De Janeiro, Brazil on March 25, 26 and 28 before moving on to another European swing that will run from May 17 through July 19. A final North American string of dates in September wraps with an Oct. 1 gig at the Rose Bowl in Los Angeles.
Watch Martin’s interview with O’Brien below.
KISS may be winding down their touring years, but that doesn’t mean you’ve seen the last of Gene Simmons and Paul Stanley. Not by a long-shot. The long-running greasepaint rockers will revisit their early years in an upcoming biopic slated to hit Netflix in 2024 according to longtime manager Doc McGhee.
McGhee discussed the project recently on The Rock Experience With Mike Brunn show, revealing, “It’s a biopic about the first four years of KISS. We’re just starting it now. We’ve already sold it, it’s already done, we have a director, McG. That’s moving along and that’ll come in ’24.” It appeared that McGhee was referring to Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle director and veteran music video helmer McG, who most recently worked with Jennifer Garner on the Netflix body swap comedy Family Leave; at press time a spokesperson for McG had not returned Billboard‘s request for confirmation on his role in the film.
Singer and co-founder Paul Stanley had earlier let the cat out of the bag in April 2021, when he tweeted out a link to a Deadline story with details on the project. That story revealed that the doc, Shout It Out Loud, will be directed by Joachim Rønning, whose credits include Kon-Tiki and Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales and will be written by Ole Sanders. At press time no information was available on casting for the film.
Stanley and bassist/singer and fellow co-founder Gene Simmons are cooperating on the project, which will chronicle their more than half-century friendship and the formation of the group in Queens, New York in the early 1970s with former founding members drummer Peter Criss and lead guitarist Ace Frehley.
Simmons and Stanley recently confirmed what they said are their final run of concerts ever, two shows at New York’s Madison Square Garden slated for Dec. 1 and 2. Ahead of the back-to-back nights at the iconic New York City venue, KISS will play 17 other shows across the U.S. and Canada as part of its End of the Road World Tour, including stops in Los Angeles, Seattle, Calgary, Montreal, Toronto and Baltimore.
In the interview with Brunn, McGhee said that while the Gene and Paul era of KISS is ending later this year, he doesn’t see it as the end of the brand, which he compared to the Marvel universe. “Will there be other forms of KISS maybe in the future after I’m gone and after they’re gone?” he teased. “I don’t see that KISS goes away,” he added, suggesting that the brand could continue in different forms into the future and that a deal to potentially sell their likenesses isn’t out of the question.
Check out the McGhee interview below.
Wayne Swinny, guitarist and co-founder of hard rockers Saliva has died at 59 after suffering a brain hemorrhage while on tour with the group. The news was confirmed by the band in a Facebook post on Wednesday (March 22) in which they wrote, “It is with great sadness that we report the passing of our brother Wayne Swinny. Wayne passed away this afternoon from a Spontaneous brain hemorrhage while we were out on tour. Details for the funeral arrangements will be announced shortly. Wayne will be missed by all those who knew him.”
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The post was accompanied by a black and white picture of Swimmy on stage wearing one of his signature black cowboy hats while strumming his guitar.
Swinny’s death was announced just hours after the band reported that he’d been hospitalized. “Our dear brother Wayne Swinny was discovered Tuesday morning in medical distress and paramedics were called,” read an earlier FB post. “He was transported to a hospital where he was diagnosed with a Spontaneous Hemorrhage in his brain. He is currently in the ICU as we await further news.”
Saliva was formed in Memphis in 1996 by singer Josey Scott, bassist Dave Novotny, drummer Todd Poole and guitarists Swinny and Chris D’Abaldo. Their Island Records debut, Every Six Seconds, was released in 2001 and spawned the thundering hits “Click Click Boom” and “Your Disease.” They followed up with 2002’s Back Into Your System and 2004’s Survival of the Sickest. Singer Scott left he group in 2011 and was replaced by Bobby Amaru; the group’s most recent album was 2018’s 10 Lives.
In a statement to TMZ, singer Amaru said, “I’m not even sure what to think or how to feel right now. My heart aches for Wayne’s family, his friends, and anyone who had the joy of being around him. My heart aches for his daughter Nikki. He loved that little girl so much … He would go out of his way to make sure you had a good time. I’m grateful that I got to share almost 12 years of my life with Wayne on the stage and most importantly off the stage.”
Amaru referred to Swinny — the only remaining original member of the group — as the older brother he never had in his statement. “I learned so much from him and we had a f—ing blast together!,” he said. “I will cherish it all for the rest of my life! God Bless you Wayne. I know we’ll meet again!!”
Saliva is in the midst of a U.S. tour, with the next scheduled date on March 29 in Colorado Springs, Colorado.
Check out the band’s tribute to Swinny below.
Milwaukee’s beloved Summerfest festival will celebrate its 55th anniversary this summer with the usual jam-packed lineup of 100 artists taking the stage over three weekends in June and July, including headliners Eric Church (with Elle King), the Zac Brown Band (with Marcus King) and James Taylor & His All-Star Band (with Sheryl Crow) on the first weekend (June 22-24).
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The second weekend (June 29-July 1) will feature headliners Dave Matthews Band, Odesza (with a Bonobo DJ set) and another artists to be announced and, on the final weekend (July 6-8) Zach Bryan and Imagine Dragons (with AJR).
“Celebrating 55 years of live music is a true testament to this festival. Together with the City of Milwaukee, we look forward to hosting music fans from across the globe at Summerfest and delivering a world-class lineup with hundreds of artists during our nine-day run” said Milwaukee World Festival Inc. CEO Don Smiley in a statement.
Other acts on the bill include: The Avett Brothers, Elvis Costello & the Imposters, Bleachers, Three 6 Mafia, Brett Eldredge, Sofi Tukker, Gryffin, Fitz and the Tantrums, NLE Choppa, Cheap Trick, Lyle Lovett, Tegan and Sara, Santa Fe Klan, Earth, Wind & Fire, Noah Kahan, Ava Max, Lord Huron, Yung Gravy, Vance Joy, Cypress Hill, The Pretty Reckless, Sean Paul, Coi Leray, Brett Young, Spin Doctors, Jesus Jones, Japanese Breakfast, Lauren Daigle, Tyler Hubbard, Yellowcard, Smokey Robinson, Fleet Foxes, The War on Drugs, Yungblud, Styx, Grupo Niche, Tesla, Dinosaur Jr., Jenny Lewis, Scotty McCreery and many more.
Tickets for Summerfest are on sale now here, with single-day general admission starting at just $26.
Check out the full 2023 Summerfest lineup below.
Pete Wentz delved into a reflection on the ups and downs of his life in the newest issue of Nylon published this week, and how he’s grown from it.
One particular turning point in his life was in 2010, when he was in the process of splitting from then-wife Ashlee Simpson, raising their son Bronx and dealing with the reality that Fall Out Boy was going on a break. “My life was just like… a bomb had gone off in it,” he said of that time period, noting that he then had a crucial realization. “You’ve atrophied all of these life skills. I was like, ‘Oh. You have to figure out how to be happy as an adult.’”
Since then, the bomb has settled. The rocker has been with his longtime partner, Megan Camper, since 2011 and the couple shares Together, they share eight-year-old son Saint and four-year-old daughter Marvel.
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Fall Out Boy has also found their way back together. They’ve released a number of albums since their break, including 2013’s Save Rock and Roll, 2015’s American Beauty/American Psycho and 2018’s Mania. Now, the band is just days away from unveiling their eighth studio album, So Much (for) Stardust on March 24.
“Why don’t you just do the s— you want to do?” Wentz says is his current life philosophy. “Life is so short, and it’s so long, that maybe you should try crazy s— because it will break you out of the feeling of nihilism.”
Read the full interview here.
If you’re lucky in life you might land your dream job. And if you are way blessed you may score two good gigs. But pulling a dream double? That’s off-the-charts, go-play-the-lottery good luck.
That’s how pinball designer Jack Danger felt when he learned that his second-ever assignment for Stern Pinball was to create a Foo Fighters machine, complete with input from one of his favorite bands. “I was like ‘holy s–t!’,” Danger tells Billboard about his reaction when Stern asked him to get to work on one of their “cornerstone” titles — the handful of big-name games the company releases each year.
Danger says the band has “followed” him around his whole life, with many of the songs in the game holding deep meaning. “There’s me working at Subway making sandwiches [while listening to the Foo Fighters],” he says of the inclusion of 15 memory-sparking tracks including “All My Life,” “Best Of You,” “Breakout,” “Everlong,” “I’ll Stick Around,” “Learn to Fly,” “Monkey Wrench,” “My Hero and “This Is a Call,” among others. “And whenever a music game comes out it really speaks to fans of their music,” he says.
While he might have had an initial moment’s pause about working on “another music pinball machine,” the thought of having a hand in adding a new bone-rattling title to the roster of excellent ones out there already honoring bands including Rush, Iron Maiden, Led Zeppelin and Metallica, sealed the deal.
“We wanted to approach this game differently than just playing music videos and having some call outs to the group,” he says as his black cat strolls lazily across his lap during a recent Zoom call, shooing it away with the tatted-up knuckles on his left hand. “Early on, the band was so gung-ho, like ‘let’s f–king make this as cool as can be!’”
In fact, the only upfront feedback the Dave Grohl-led Rock and Roll Hall of Famers gave was that they wanted the design to be about the Foos touring in a van. That made sense, since Danger began his work around the time the group released their 2021 documentary about the topic: What Drives Us. It also helped that he was working with an all-star team, including Deadpool game programmer Tanio Klyce and artist Zombie Yeti, known for his colorful, killer illustrations on Stern’s Godzilla and Avengers Infinity Quest machines, as well as some classic Foos concert posters.
“‘I get those two to work on this machine? That’s a double-whammy! Holy s–t! I get to work with these people who made machines I love?,’” Danger recalls thinking about his all-star crew. Taking a cue from some of Yeti’s previous posters, they landed on a story about aliens — the Foos’ name was inspired by a WWII term for UFOs — pretending to be humans by wearing terrible disguises. That morphed into the final story of a fictional cartoon series, Foo Fighters Saturday Morning Action Time!, in which the Foos fight aliens and go on a quest to save rock ‘n’ roll from from a mysterious alien overlord and his robot army.
The end result includes a backglass (the upright portion that faces the player) in which a giant alien holds the band’s members in his outstretched hand as Grohl leaps out of a space ship and illustrations on the sides of the cabinet of the Foos in their tricked-out van, with late drummer Taylor Hawkins rocking out in the front seat next to keyboard player Rami Jaffee; those three, as well as guitarists Pat Smear, Chris Shiflett and bassist Nate Mendel, offered creative input on the two-years-in-the-making game and are featured all over the cabinet.
Erik Wurtenberger, co-founder of Cincinnati’s annual Pincinnati pinball tournament and show — where pinheads can play everything from vintage machines to the latest models — says he hasn’t had a chance to play the Foos game yet, but he’s very eager to get his hands on it. “It looks very promising,” he says. He also says that the current crop of rock games from Stern are all “very good. From Rush to AC/DC, Metallica, KISS, Aerosmith, etc., Stern has done a fantastic job making these games.”
Wurtenberger says the rock games have all done very well at Pincinnati and titles like the Foos one are definitely bringing more people to pinball.
Danger, 42, began to turn heads in the pinball world nearly a decade ago when he helped pioneer the notion of streaming pinball play on Twitch under his nom-de-play, Dead Flip, including making suggestions to manufacturers about what would make their gameplay even better. Those videos caught the attention of Stern after Danger posted about his first home-brewed pinball design, which led to a job offer from Stern EVP/Chief Creative Officer George Gomez.
“I had built the resume that every designer needs to get a job, so they asked me to do this Jurassic Park home model and that sold pretty well,” says Danger of his first design. So, 14 months ago he began working on the Foos machine and, he says proudly, “we spoke with them and they were all in on any weird-ass thing we came up with.”
As for the songs that made the cut, Danger says they needed to have the energy to match the action of a fast-moving machine, with each track carefully curated to keep up with the streaking silver ball and upper-deck playfields. “We wanted this game to feel like a Saturday morning cartoon… and everything had to be cohesive with what you’re seeing an hearing,” he says. That included bringing in Brendon Small, the voice actor and musician who co-created the Adult Swim hard rock cartoon series Metalocalypse to voice the game’s ominous bad guy overlord alien.
There were originally plans to work more closely with the band on specific aspects of the game, but when Hawkins died unexpectedly in March 2022 Danger forged ahead with their blessing and alien marching orders.
“There was a moment where we were like, ‘do we keep moving forward with this?’ But we decided to give them time to grieve and not bother them, but from a manufacturing standpoint we had to keep on the timeline,” Danger says. Even so, as the team forged ahead, Danger crows that it was, “nothing but ‘f–k yeahs left and right,’” from the band and their team, which might explain why the game has more four-letter words than your average title.
A Stern rep says the limited-edition version of the game (1,000 units at $12,999) has already sold out, but the premium ($9,699) and pro editions ($6,999) are still available. If those are too pricey, you can look for the the game at bars and arcades around the country soon.
Check out pics of the Foo Fighters game below.
Courtesy of Stern Pinball
Courtesy of Stern Pinball
Courtesy of Stern Pinball
The Album
Rat Saw God, out 4/7 on Dead Oceans.
The Origin
As a kid growing up in Greensboro, N.C., Karly Hartzman “always wanted to be in a band, but wasn’t,” she tells Billboard. By “going to every show I could and photographing shows and making zines,” she eventually landed in a pop-punk band in high school – “just kind of noodling around” on a microKORG synthesizer – before taking up songwriting and performing in earnest as a student at University of North Carolina Asheville in the mid-’10s. After buying her friend’s guitar in junior year, Hartzman “just kind of fucked around until I made a sound that sounded good,” she says. “I taught myself on a combination of watching live videos of other bands on YouTube and learning covers. I still haven’t had a lesson really – so I’m just kind of flying by the seat of my pants.”
Hartzman conceived alt-country project Wednesday in 2017, subsequently turning to peers in Asheville’s robust indie circuit to make it a proper band. The following year’s self-released yep definitely served as a test run, before the band — by then comprised of Hartzman, Xandy Chelmis (lap steel), Alan Miller (drums), Margo Schultz (bass) and Daniel Gorham (guitar), released I Was Trying to Describe You to Someone (“our first album, like with a label that we were excited about”) on Orindal in February 2020.
“The first time we felt validly like, ‘We’re doing music, this is a record we have on vinyl’ was right before the pandemic,” Hartzman says. “Our release show got canceled because of the pandemic. And then we weren’t playing any shows, [so we] had no idea how people felt about the album.”
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The Sound
Wednesday fuses traditional alt-rock hooks with enveloping shoegaze and country twang for music that’s both familiar and singular, and Hartzman’s evocative, specific songwriting draws on great country music storytellers – Drive-By Truckers, Lucinda Williams, “a lot of the outlaw country people” – who she credits for producing “some of the most amazing lyricism in the world.” Hartzman spent her North Carolina youth “hearing country songwriters ambiently kind of against your will, whether you liked it or not,” and spent years keeping the music at arm’s length due to its conservative cultural connotations. But she reconsidered her stance after discovering artists, like the Truckers, who “[embodied] the fact that you can enjoy country music and promote social justice.”
In 2022, Wednesday released a covers album, Moving the Leaves Instead of Piling ‘Em Up, that epitomized the band’s diverse interests, with songs by country legends (Gary Stewart, Roger Miller), alt-country greats (Vic Chesnutt, Drive-By Truckers), The Smashing Pumpkins, and contemporary Brooklyn DIY upstarts Hotline TNT. “We take all of the genres we do have influence from very seriously, and we have a deep love and appreciate for all of that music,” says Hartzman, describing the set as “less of us trying to replicate a sound and more us trying to do justice to where we’re from and how it influenced our taste.”
Another key element: Chelmis’ lap steel work, which took on a distinct character after he accidentally routed it through a distortion pedal and liked the sound. “He’s really revolutionizing that instrument,” Hartzman says. “When you tour with an instrument that is not just a regular guitar, I think it is really engaging, because it brings some of the magic back into music. Not knowing how something works as an audience member is one of the most fun experiences you can have — watching someone who has mastered this mysterious thing.”
The Breakthrough
With the pandemic raging in 2020, and little bearing on how much IWTTDYTS was or wasn’t catching on with audiences, Wednesday scored discounted studio time in Asheville and recorded Twin Plagues, which it released in August 2021. (Gorham departed Wednesday before the sessions and was replaced by Jake Lenderman.) When touring restarted and the band hit the road in support of the record, it was shocked by the way positive internet buzz had grown its real-life audiences. “We were like, ‘What the hell? When did this happen?’” Hartzman recalls. “It was very zero to 100 … very surreal. It felt like it didn’t happen fast, because it was years of standing still with the pandemic — but if you put the show before the pandemic next to a show after the pandemic, it’s a huge jump.”
The attention attracted more than just fans: Soon, Wednesday signed with Dead Oceans, the prominent indie label that has in recent years helped catapult Phoebe Bridgers, Mitski and Japanese Breakfast to stardom. (With a laugh, Hartzman describes Dead Oceans as “our Harvard, our reach label. I was like, ‘There is no f—king way.’”) The band returned to Asheville and holed up in a “fancy-schmancy studio” to record its Dead Oceans debut.
The resulting album, Rat Saw God, expands Twin Plagues’ rootsy scuzz to epic proportions; Wednesday announced their Dead Oceans signing to the public with the release of the set’s lead single “Bull Believer,” a blistering, eight-and-a-half-minute opus that covers lyrical ground from Spanish bullfighting to Mortal Kombat before dissolving into squalls of distortion and Hartzman’s shrieks. But otherwise, Rat Saw God finds strength in concision, as sturdy hooks score Hartzman’s vivid and often unsettling verses, where characters might doze off watching Formula One racing, get their stomach pumped after tripping too hard on Benadryl, or overdose in a Planet Fitness parking lot.
While Rat Saw God is sonic step forward for the band, it’s an even bigger advancement for Hartzman’s personal, detailed lyricism, which shines throughout. Take brief and breezy album closer “TV in the Gas Pump” (out today), something of a travelogue documenting a recent two-week Wednesday tour.
“The lyrics for that one were collected in a phone note,” Hartzman says. “Anytime I would see something out the van window or we had an experience that stuck with me, I would write it down.” At one gig, Chelmis took more mushrooms than he planned for a microdose, and found himself overwhelmed in a dollar store across the street from the venue – forever immortalized in the song’s final verse as “Violently came up/ In a Dollar General/ You took too much.”
The Future
As the latest standard-bearers of North Carolina’s prolific indie-rock scene – embodied by revered Durham-based label Merge, and artists including Superchunk, Polvo and Archers of Loaf – Wednesday wants to help their talented peers get their due. Last fall, the band took Raleigh shredders Truth Club on tour as support, and one of Asheville’s most promising young artists lives within Wednesday’s ranks: Lenderman, Hartzman’s partner and Wednesday’s guitarist, released his acclaimed album Boat Songs as MJ Lenderman in April 2022. “I like the fact that we’re kind of coming up together,” says Hartzman, who frequently plays in Lenderman’s band on his solo tours. “It’s very exciting and fun.”
Hartzman’s excited to see how fans receive Wednesday’s new material live once they’ve had time to digest it, and she emphasizes how invigorating life on the road is for her creatively. That said, she cherishes returning home to North Carolina. “I’m glad I live out of the way, where people don’t really give a f—k about indie music a lot of the time,” she says. “My life at home will stay really normal, and then I can have my Hannah Montana moment on tour, and then come home and, like, be a person.”
The Piece of Equipment You Couldn’t Live Without
“I have like a ’90s Rat distortion pedal – I use that and a tuner on stage.”
The Artist You Believe Deserves More Attention
“Honestly, I feel like it’s time for Unwound to get their flowers, especially because they’re playing again [on a just-concluded reunion tour]. I feel like I don’t see people talking about them and how influential and how much their sound has affected a lot of [artists], especially Philly shoegaze sounds. I’m an Unwound head. It’s one of my favorite bands.”
The Piece of Advice Every New Indie Artist Needs to Hear
“Don’t think about the audience that is going to hear your song when you’re writing and just think about what you want to say.”
The Thing That Needs to Change in the Music Industry
“Oh lord. Everything? I think the first thing needs to be we need to change the way we pay opening bands. It’s really unsustainable for a band, especially if it’s a band in a van that’s trying to catch up with a band on a tour bus. It’s a really unsustainable practice.”
The Thing They Hope Fans Take Away From Their Album
“I just hope they hear this one and trust that I’m gonna keep making music. We’re signed to a bigger label and I think the sellout mentality, it scares a lot of people — but I feel like we are on a mission to stay very true to ourselves. I want them to trust that I’m going to keep doing whatever the f—k I want with my songs.”