Live Review: Wednesday with Gouge Away at Variety Playhouse in Atlanta, 3/14/26

It’s difficult to put a label on Asheville’s alternative rock band Wednesday. Some have tried to describe the group as an amalgam of shoegaze, noise rock, and alternative country. Perhaps “alt-rock” works best as an umbrella term for a band that comes at you from all angles.

Lead singer-songwriter Karly Hartzman writes songs that underscore life in the South, much like her idol Patterson Hood of Drive-By Truckers. In fact, Wednesday covered the Truckers’ tune “Women Without Whiskey” on the band’s 2022 covers album Mowing the Leaves Instead of Piling ‘Em Up. To their credit, Hood has publicly endorsed the band as one of his favorites. Hartzman even pointed to her vintage Truckers T-shirt during the show, quipping, “Whenever I find vintage DBT stuff, I buy that shit.”

The band reportedly chose their name as a nod to ’90s act The Sundays. Wednesday has since earned widespread acclaim with their latest album Bleeds (Dead Oceans), released last fall. Now on tour, the quintet continues to pick up fans from all walks of life. On this sold-out night in Atlanta at Variety Playhouse, concertgoers ranged in age from seven to seventy, tatted and non-tatted, dressed in business casual to wildly eclectic. Clearly, Wednesday’s appeal cuts across generational and stylistic lines.

Opening with “Reality TV Argument Bleeds,” Hartzman let out a guttural scream as the band launched into a night of loud, cathartic rock and roll: “Pickin’ the ticks off of you / If you need me, I’ll call you / In wino shoes, he drags his feet / And I crawl toward you unkillably.” She is a Southern storyteller in the finest sense, forcing vivid imagery onto the listener whether they like it or not.

Her lyrics run the gamut from serious and heartbreaking (“The Way Love Goes”) to wildly funny (“Phish Pepsi”), where she sings: “We watched a Phish concert and Human Centipede / Two things I now wish I had never seen.” The singer’s vocal range is just as dynamic—sweet and soft when thanking the crowd between songs, then erupting into emotional screams. In between lies some of the sharpest songwriting of the decade.

Toward the end of the night, Hartzman announced, “We’ve got a couple songs left, and we don’t do encores because my voice will be shot.” She wasn’t kidding. “Bull Believer” and “Wasp” were both fired out of a cannon, and by the end her voice had clearly left the building. The latter is a thrashing standout from the new album and perhaps its most intensely unsettling track. With crowdsurfing at a peak, the band went out with a bang.

Speaking of screaming, openers Gouge Away blew the walls off the Variety before the headliner even took the stage. The five-piece hardcore punk band from Fort Lauderdale had the volume cranked to 11 from the first note. Singer Christina Michelle powered through a raucous 40-minute set that made earplugs feel less like a suggestion and more like a necessity.

Citing influences such as Fugazi, Nirvana, and The Jesus Lizard, the band told No Earplugs that they did, in fact, name themselves after the Pixies song “Gouge Away.” “But those guys weren’t back together when we formed,” they added, not wanting to appear too fan-boyish. The band is opening for much of Wednesday’s U.S. tour, exposing them to new audiences as the run of shows approaches near sell-out status. Early in the set, Michelle looked out at the venue and joked, “We’ve never played to this many chairs!”

Introducing the song “Consider,” Michelle declared, “It’s about I.C.E.—fuck I.C.E.!” to loud cheers from the crowd. Though the track was released early in the pandemic era, its message resonates even more strongly today: “Hiding white nationalism behind fantasy of patriotism / If you find yourself getting defensive, you are the infestation.”

The audience’s uproarious response said everything that needed to be said.

For more information on the tour, visit Wednesday or Gouge Away.