Gen Z’s greatest rock band isn't Geese, it’s Wednesday.
It’s an opinion I’ve espoused at many a pub over the last two years and I feel more vindicated than ever after finally seeing the North Carolina natives live at Melbourne’s Max Watts this past Sunday.
Goth kids were lined up an hour before doors as I passed the venue on my way to a cheap BYO-friendly dumpling dinner in China Town, a predictable but noteworthy testament to the immense dedication that the band inspires.
Local band Alien Nose Job did an exceptional job at setting the tone early, with little to no chatter before or during their set, they powered through a blistering collection of angular punk songs that primed the crowd for a night of noisy mayhem.
With a steady AC/DC stomp expertly underpinning their egg punk urgency, the band are no strangers to the local scene and yet remain one to watch.
Wednesday took the stage to the sound of cacophonous screams from their adoring fans and swiftly launched into their opening number Reality TV Argument Bleeds.
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Frontwoman Karly Hartzman followed the song with a brief but poignant statement. ‘I can sense that you’re rabid people. It’s a compliment’. The pandemonium that followed proved her assessment to be correct.
The crowd was just as I expected. 70 percent Gen Z goth girlies who no doubt feel as seen as can be by Hartzman’s emotive and painfully candid lyrics, and 30 percent middle aged hipster dads who no doubt came across the band via their genre lineage connections with groups like Drive By Truckers and Swirlies.
A crisp, heavy and bass filled sound rattled the walls of Max Watts as Wednesday rattled off some of their finest songs, Hartzman rocking her signature baritone Danalectro as she belted out particularly superb versions of Wound Up Here (By Holdin’ On) and Candy Breath.
It hit home early just how driven Wednesday and indeed their sister/brother/ex-boyfriend? band MJ Lenderman and the Wind are by lap and pedal steel player Xandy Chelmis, whose stylings provided much of both the noise and country twang that defines the band’s sound.
Something else that struck me was Hartzman’s willingness to take the time she needed to prepare between songs. A mark of a road warrior not in the least bit phased by a 850 strong crowd hanging on her every subtly southern drawled word and eagerly awaiting her next move.
The understated yet charismatic front woman took the time to dedicate a couple of numbers to a crowd member named Sean, who she had apparently spotted waiting outside the venue at the eye-watering time of 1.30pm and felt compelled to stop and ask him for some requests.
Yet another example of the rabid fandom that surrounds the band and also Hartzman’s down-to-earth willingness to interact with her people.
A couple of songs later she was able to identify a sole member of the crowd from her home state of North Carolina and dedicated the country-tinged track Phish Pepsi to him, which received an extremely enthusiastic scream from the young and passionate mob at the front of stage.
Quarry was a hit, its melody charmingly reminiscent of the Kink’s Waterloo Sunset, a band coincidentally the subject of Alien Nosejob’s previously performed track Beatles vs Stones (‘The argument has no meaning and the notion of it stinks, everybody knows the answer to the question is The Kinks’). Hartzman then spun an enthralling and hilarious yarn about Martha Wainwright and her Father Loudon Wainwright III before launching into an excellent cover of the songstress’s track Far Away which went down a treat with the well versed crowd.
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Young fans threw up W signs with their excitedly shaking hands as Wednesday launched into their potentially best and most revered song, the effortlessly catchy alt-country banger Elderberry Wine.
The gorgeous song was played faithfully and without unnecessary fanfare and was preceded by a brand new song entitled Dune II, which the band had reportedly only played live once before. Dune II came with a very funny anecdote about the band’s experience in NZ with a scuba diver and their inability to grasp his accent.
Hartzman indulged in gulps from a bottle of sake throughout the set which she eventually and potentially reluctantly shared with her bandmates. The visual was reminiscent of her heroes Drive By Truckers who famously downed bottles of Jack Daniel’s on stage during their heyday in the 2000s.
After a wise refusal to do a shoey for fear of food poisoning ruining the rest of the band’s sold out Australian tour, Hartzman introduced the band’s hit song Townies as a song about a blowjob, which she laughingly corrected to a song about a handjob during the song’s intro. Her willingness to laugh and somewhat botch the song’s words only endeared her further to the adoring crowd.
Hartzman wisely noted the audience’s obvious lack of response to her mention of her home state of North Carolina being ‘one the United States of America’ and furthermore dedicated her following screams to the sentiment of ‘fuck ICE and free Palestine’, inviting the adoring crowd to join in. They did so. The climax of the penultimate song Bull Believer drove home just how passionate the band’s fanbase are and how incredible of a live act Wednesday have become. The band then ended on the heavy track Wasp, leaving the crowd wanting more as all the best bands do.
A world in which artsy goth girls and queer folk scream heartily along to pedal steel driven alt-country music is a world in which I’m ecstatic to live in, and it’s a world almost solely of Wednesday’s creation.
As I stumbled home from the show it was more obvious to me than ever that Wednesday are far more than the premier alt country/shoegaze band of their generation, they might be THE band of their generation.
Geese eat your heart out.
