Wednesday: Rat Saw God (Dead Oceans)

A group whose reputation has gradually snowballed over the past decade with an increasingly excellent run of albums, US alt. rock contenders Wednesday are surely on the cusp of entering the big leagues. Based in North Carolina, a Southern State best known for its music scene in Chapel Hill, home to a score of bands and Merge Records, Wednesday are based in the rundown suburbs of Asheville, several hours away.

Lyrically the outfit are chroniclers of smalltown American life, largely autobiographical vignettes written by frontwoman Karly Hartzman. Wednesday’s not-so-secret-weapon, the singer has the Jarvis Cocker, or at his most downbeat, Nebraska-era Bruce Springsteen-esque knack of bringing everyday characters and events vividly to life.

Audaciously placing the longest track on the album, cathartic eight-minute blow out Bull Believer second, is a statement of intent as the track is usually their set closer. Evoking their Stateside antecedents, Hot Rotten Grass Smell has some of the angular guitar riffage of groundbreaking post-rockers Slint about it. An account of a friend OD-ing – and surviving –a reasonably priced buzz on Benadryl, the sweet guitar crunch of Chosen to Deserve is redolent of Evan Dando in country crooner mode.

Inspired by chronic insomnia, the woozily romantic Formula One, (“I like sleeping with the lights on you / You with me / Watching Formula One”) – extols the virtues of comfort blanket viewing of obscure TV sports channels, as Lewis Hamilton et al are virtual unknowns in the States. The slow rolling, twilit What’s So Funny, is all too brief at two and a half minutes, but features the best couplet on the LP, “Memory always twists the knife / Nothing will ever be as vivid as the darkest time of my life”.

TV In The Gas Pump combining country picking and controlled feedback highlights the group's alt country leanings, showcasing Xandy Chelmis’s woozy lap steel textures and the superlative guitar work of MJ Lenderman - fast becoming a star in his own right.

Five albums in and truly beginning to hit their stride, to return to the sporting metaphor in British fashion, the follow up to Rat Saw God will surely earn Wednesday promotion to the Premiership. 4/5