• Reviews

• All
• Music
• DVDs
• Live
• Cinema
• TV
• Books
• Comic Books
• Video Games

Apr 05, 2023 Web Exclusive By Mark Moody

The Blue Ridge Mountains of Appalachia are some of the oldest in the world. Ancient, tired and full of deeply guarded secrets. This equally tattered and mystical place is where the members of Wednesday cut their teeth and draw their inspiration. Where the never shortened name of “My Lord and Savior Jesus Christ” is ever present on the lips, but also where salvation is more likely to come from a burst of NARCAN (“Bath County”) or a good old-fashioned stomach pumping (“Chosen to Deserve”).

The Karly Hartzman-led quartet (sans original bassist Margo Shultz at time of release), bluster their way through the dualities of the region with equal doses of swagger and restraint. Dropping some of the artsier passages of the preceding Twin Plagues, its follow-up finds the band with any vestiges of varnish sanded away in favor of a more direct assault on the senses—both auditory and in Hartzman’s sometimes painful backwoods’ imagery.

Nearly 20 percent of the album is given over to the gale force winds of “Bull Believer,” that deliver death to your doorstep—both real and cartoonish. But aural respite is provided as well, with the band seemingly riffing on The Kinks’ “Waterloo Sunset” on the gorgeous “Quarry,” assuming Ray Davies’ Terry and Julie lived in a van down by the French Broad River. While Hartzman’s own tale is told more directly on “Chosen to Deserve,” where teaching Sunday school and having sex in the back of an SUV sit non-judgmentally, and literally, side by side.

Rat Saw God stands as a more open testament to the band’s and Hartzman’s unflinching observations of what is abundantly shown to them along the well worn highways they traverse. Disaffection is displayed directly in the closing arrest scene of “Quarry” but comes more subtly in the always-on video monitor of the closing “TV in the Gas Pump.” The shrugged shoulder irony of real life places such as the Adam & Eve sex shop or a Southern-themed amusement park give Rat Saw God its substance. The slurred lines of dual guitars and pedal steel that run rampant over most of its course provide the PICC line to serve it up to you. (www.wednesday.band)

Author rating: 8/10