KARLY HARTZMAN
A Wednesday song is a quilt. A short story collection, a half-memory, a patchwork of portraits
of the American south, disparate moments that somehow make sense as a whole. Karly
Hartzman, the songwriter/vocalist/guitarist at the helm of the project, is a story collector as
much as she is a storyteller: a scholar of people and one-liners. Rat Saw God, Wednesday's new
and best record, is ekphrastic but autobiographical and above all, deeply empathetic.
Rat Saw God is an album about riding a bike down a suburban stretch in Greensboro while
listening to My Bloody Valentine for the first time on an iPod Nano, past a creek that runs
through the neighborhood riddled with broken glass bottles and condoms, a front yard filled
with broken and rusted car parts, a lonely and dilapidated house reclaimed by kudzu. Four
Lokos and rodeo clowns and a kid who burns down a corn field. Roadside monuments, church
marquees, poppers and vodka in a plastic water bottle, the shit you get away with at Jewish
summer camp, strange sentimental family heirlooms at the thrift stores. The way the South
hums alive all night in the summers and into fall, the sound of high school football games, the
halo effect from the lights polluting the darkness. It’s not really bright enough to see in front of
you, but in that stretch of inky void – somehow – you see everything. The songs on Rat Saw God
don’t recount epics, just the everyday. They’re real life, blurry and chaotic and strange – which
is in-line with Hartzman’s own ethos: “Everyone’s story is worthy,” she says, plainly. “Literally
every life story is worth writing down, because people are so fascinating.”
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MJ LENDERMAN
MJ Lenderman is a songwriter born and raised in Asheville, North Carolina. The anatomy of an
MJ record might go something like this: warped pedal steels and skuzzed out guitar; a voice
reminiscent of the high-lonesome warble of a choirboy; musings of a front-stoop philosopher.
Songs snake their way from a lo-fi home recording to something glossier made with longtime
friends at Asheville’s Drop of Sun studios, but the recording setting doesn’t seem to matter
much – at its core, a Lenderman song rings true.
These are songs about everything from a relationship disintegrating outside the high-end
butcher shop to a sighting of football star Dan Marino at the local Harris Teeter; from a love
song built around a t-shirt kiosk at the airport, the malaise of a grill rusting in the rain. And
those are just some of the things you might find across his three solo records: MJ Lenderman
(2019), Ghost of Your Guitar Solo (2021), and break-through acclaimed studio debut, Boat
Songs (2022). Lenderman’s songwriting is simple and true, stories delivered with a loping, easy
vibe - a shrug of the shoulders, off-the-cuff guitar riffs fuzzy, a tangle of pedal steel and rock ‘n’
roll distortion culminating in alt-country cacophony. An MJ Lenderman song feels like a
postcard from a hazy memory, the unpredictable bits and details that end up sticking – bird
songs from the rafters of a hardware store, a real good Bob Dylan cover – and what make a
story whole.