Brash and brilliant, Wednesday’s 2020 track “Fate Is…” marks the Asheville band’s first foray into their heralded alt-country sound.
Stream: “Fate Is…” – Wednesday
No one is beating Wednesday when it comes to telling stories about the American South.
From hot and hazy summers to lonely nights spent among the Appalachian Mountains, frontwoman Karly Hartzman is no stranger to both the explosive history of punk and the twang of country. “Fate Is…,” the opening song off their 2020 sophomore album, I Was Trying to Describe You to Someone, expertly combines the two.
On this track, Hartzman and her bandmates capture the experience of stubbornly facing the consequences of one’s actions, drawing on imagery from Southern music and literature.
The record’s title is borrowed from a Richard Brautigan work of the same name, which centers on a man attempting to describe the woman he loves to someone, though she looks like nothing and no one he has ever seen. Perhaps his love for her is so all-consuming nothing else compares. He instead references a film he saw in his youth about a family of farmers who build a generator to acquire electricity for their home.
The poem concludes: “I wanted electricity to go everywhere in the world. I wanted all the farmers in the world to be able to listen to President Roosevelt on the radio. That’s how you look to me.” The sentiment is the record’s thesis – finding ways to understand one’s emotions through what is already explained.
“Fate Is…” starts the album off with a bang.
While tracks like “November” or “Revenge of the Lawn” lean more toward ethereal slowcore, this song sets itself apart with a blast of shoegaze-inspired buzzy guitar. The lyrics fit right in with the sludge, using a combination of music and literary references to paint the picture of someone striking it out on their own, but nothing is going their way.
Only reason I did it was to
find out what it’s like
Pass the billboard on the street and wonder
If hell will swallow me up
Fate is drawing its leg back to kick me
The song references two works: Flannery O’Connor’s Wise Blood and “What It’s Like” by Arthur Russell. Wise Blood follows Hazel Motes, a World War II veteran who, disillusioned by Christianity, begins an anti-religious church. The phrase “wise blood” (or, in this case, “smart blood”) in the novel refers to an individual who needs no religious or spiritual guidance to know what direction to take in life.
The latter piece, “What It’s Like,” is a song about a man who lies down with a woman in a field, only to find God and reject the woman. She responds that she only did any of it to discover what it’s like. Hartzman weaves between the two with a level of indignation and stubbornness reflected in her soaring, wailing sound that slices through the loudest riffs. After thirty seconds of grunge distortion, her vocals enter, taunting the listener and refusing to let their attention wander. It’s as though she is sitting someone down at a cafe and breaking up with them for not understanding her. With each line, she declares, “I don’t care what happens to me. I know myself, and everything else is wrong.”
You filled all your shoes
with rocks and left the house
Then when you got home
You had the things to blind yourself
These lyrics are particularly striking. In another nod to Wise Blood, the song references a moment in the novel when a blind preacher is revealed to be a fraud. Hazel Motes discovers that he never truly blinded himself with rocks as he claimed earlier, and he has lacked faith the entire time. Later in the story, Motes blinds himself as described in the song, completing the act the preacher could not. In the context of the track, this suggests that it’s impossible to reject your fate, as it will always deliver the final blow.
I Was Trying to Describe You to Someone is a giant step up from yep, definitely, the band’s first record from 2018, which is almost impossible to find anywhere. Whereas the first album leans on synth-pop and indie rock, the following installment opts for a sound echoing bands like Sonic Youth and even Veruca Salt to cradle its country influences while still managing to sound distinctly modern.
While critical acclaim began pouring in for Wednesday’s third LP Twin Plagues (2021) and their fifth record Rat Saw God (2023), this project does everything those records capitalize on while also feeling deeply rooted in their home of North Carolina. When traced back, this opening track is the beginning of everything.
At just under three minutes, the shortest on the record, “Fate Is…” is completely unapologetic, rolling along without allowing much time for contemplation.
The second the instrumental lets up, Hartzman delivers what is essentially, “F— you, I won’t do what you tell me,” à la Rage Against the Machine. This is a near-perfect rock song that remains not only relevant and compelling after nearly five years but is the beginning of a new era for Wednesday, all while being the very first track on the album.
If there’s one thing “Fate Is…” leaves you with, it’s the knowledge that the next time something goes wrong, it’s simply fate drawing its leg back to kick you.
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Stream: “Fate Is…” – Wednesday
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