Karly Hartzman

Karly Hartzman is much more than the founder and frontperson of Wednesday, one of the most electrifying and interesting rock bands to emerge from the American South this century. She is a total artist, expressing every aspect of her life through any one of several forms. Hartzman, for instance, sews, making not only curtains and Wednesday merch but also clothes for her bandmates. She is an illustrator and, apart from the vivid verse that is at the core of Wednesday, a sharp prose writer, whether digging into a new Gary Stewart biography for Stereogum or considering the way her breakup with longtime Wednesday bandmate MJ Lenderman as both of their stars rose left a mark. Hartzman has all those outlets, but she also still has lots of songs, some of which don’t necessarily have a ready home. “You literally can’t release things as often as you make them because people’s attention spans will get desensitized to you,” she once told The Creative Independent. “You need time to settle in with an artist before you’re ready for more.”

Hartzman’s solo shows are outlets for the outliers, songs that have not yet made their way to Wednesday records. She, of course, also plays several known Wednesday cuts and covers, a key piece of Wednesday’s origin story and the basis for 2022’s excellent Mowing the Leaves Instead of Piling ‘em Up. And without her band at her back, Hartzman’s guitar playing is a reminder of the way these songs borrow from indie rock, country, and emo, little bits of chords and dynamics stitched together like a patchwork. What’s more, Hartzman may pause a song to tell some frank and disarming, stinging and sweet story, much like the plot of some prospective Wednesday track awaiting release.