The best bands contain multitudes, dualities, absurdities. They play with words, structures and ideas. They challenge and confront, while also welcoming and understanding. They are not afraid to crumble, to show vulnerability, to be the strongest of the bunch. They listen as much as they sing. That's Wednesday. Formed in 2017, the band released four full-length albums and three EPs before putting out 2023's exceptional Rat Saw God, which saw them emerge as a critical and commercial darlin' — selling out venues, playing festivals and late night shows, and ending up on numerous year-end lists (including Exclaim!'s), the album's baroque cover somehow perfectly complementing the noisy slacker-country contained within. Now, two years later, the band — Karly Hartzman (lead vocals, guitar), Xandy Chelmis (lap steel, pedal steel), Alan Miller (drums), Ethan Baechtold (bass, piano) and Jake "MJ" Lenderman (guitar) — are back with Bleeds, a brilliant, beautiful and brutal album that just may be the band's best." Reality TV Argument Bleeds" opens the affair with gusto. At first quiet and sustained, the dirge-like intro crawls along on a trudging bassline and walls of feedback, rising and rising (and rising) before blooming, Hartzman's piercing scream ushering in an explosion from the rest of the band. The riffs are furious and cascading, the drums pounding, the album bursting from the jump on the crest of crunch. Bleeds has a decidedly more disturbing undercurrent than Rat Saw God, the history of Southern Gothic literature coursing violently through the album's veins. On "Wound Up Here (By Holdin On)," "Bitter Everyday," "Townies," and the skeletal, organ-inflected standout "Carolina Murder Suicide," the bodies — water-logged, mysterious, gruesome — pile up, with harrowing, often grisly details alluding to the darkness that lurks behind Southern charm. Still, what Wednesday exude more than anything is empathy, for others and for themselves. On "Townies," Hartzman recognizes how gossip and judgement are often projections of people's own insecurities, directed, in this case, at a high school friend whose sexual proclivities cause sensationalized whispers through the halls. Backseats, drug connects and field parties lit by fires set the scene; as the central character, Hartzman sings, "You sent my nudes around / I never yelled at you about it, 'cause you died," equal parts lamentation and accusation. And somehow, she stretches out "died" into a single-word chorus singalong. The 86-second burner "Wasp" sees Hartzman turning inward, building a silken self-fulfilling trap on which she shrieks, "My life is a spiderweb / Built into the doorway / When you walk in, you duck your head / And the wind is always blowing." On the cozy, country-fried closer "Gary's II," an old landlord gets dentures at age 33 after his teeth are knocked out, the dentist's drill buzzing simultaneously inside his mouth, Hartzman's and the listener's. It ends abruptly — and hilariously — on the word "Pepsi," the music stopping on a rusty dime. The album's 12 songs were recorded at Drop of Sun studio in Asheville, NC, with Alex Farrar once again behind the boards. Farrar, who has worked on all the band's albums since 2021's grunge-y Twin Plagues, adds a bubbling warmth, even to the iciest tracks, helping melt away the tension and pain — even if residual puddles of hurt still remain. Unfortunately, not all of the tracks land with the same energy or affect, particularly a few songs in the middle of the album. "Phish Pepsi," which first appeared on the band's Guttering EP, is a light but forgettable finger-picked ditty, while the noodly "Candy Breath" fuzzes but never takes off. One thing Bleeds doesn't dwell on is the dissolution of Hartzman and Lenderman's relationship, which ended after six years right before the album was recorded. While it certainly peppers the proceedings, the threads unspooling during the writing process, the album's lyrical content isn't (self-)obsessed with heartache. The sparse "The Way Love Goes" is the most unambiguous, introspective example, with the line, "Feel like I'm almost good enough to know you," heartbreakingly delicate and relatable. Yet throughout the record, there are other injustices, other problems, other evils that make the broken heart pale in comparison. Hartzman, the band's primary lyricist, stretches her crushed, soaring vocals into daring new territory: on "Wound Up Here," "Wasp," and "Pick Up That Knife," she screams and sings, cracking and slicing, tearing and roaring, her honeyed voice curdling; sometimes at the edges, sometimes to the core. The latter name-drops Death Grips and revels in chewing tobacco, both of which are evident in the vocal performance. On "Elderberry Wine," however, that same voice is a warm wind lightly billowing lace curtains, twanging against the walls of the mind-saloon, the tears-in-your-shots-and-beers dripping out a stoned symphony of brine, mellow joints and missed opportunities. Relishing in the paradox of the titular sweet and tart drink, Hartzman has mastered the art of being fragile, coy and fierce without losing an ounce of sincerity or power. Her singing brings honesty and resolve to the words, and it's the album's most necessary, towering presence. Bruised and transcendent, Bleeds is a fire — hypnotic, ephemeral and destructive. It drips with acrimony and understanding, of strain and elation; like ripping off a bandaid to reveal a scar, healed but permanent. Full of complicated emotions and sombre nostalgia, it confronts the darkness and the details, the granular and grandeur, the trivialities and the everything. That's just life, and that's just Wednesday: an exercise in horrible, wonderful contradiction.