Wednesday - Twin Plagues

Hot on the heels of 2020 lo-fi debut, ‘I Was Trying to Describe You to Someone’, North Carolina-based outfit Wednesday deliver a primped-up package of vitreous guitar-pop for their second release. Fronted by the heart-on-sleeve tenacity of Karly Hartzman, Wednesday navigate punchy grunge pop a la Beabadoobee - ‘Handsome Man’ is sharp enough to cut diamonds - right through to downbeat introspections (‘Gary’s’, ‘The Burned Down Dairy Queen’) that channel the raw emotional intimacy of Mitski and Snail Mail. A coming-of-age record of sorts, loose clippings of memory bob in and out of squalls of feedback – there are recollections of car crashes to complement the scrapheap cover art; there’s the chronicling of arguments between friends, of Karly herself as a “neighbourhood kid with a fucked-up buzzcut” and, most memorably of a chaotic high-school acid trip replete with broken bones detailed in the gorgeously hazy ‘Birthday Song’.