Brace yourselves, because Mr. KanHey is here to disrupt the status quo — and guess who just lit the fuse? North Carolina’s subterranean saints of sonic sorrow, Wednesday, are back from the shadows with a bruised bouquet of gothic melodrama that is “Wound Up Here (By Holdin On),” a searing preview from their upcoming LP, *Bleeds*, dropping this September like a velvet guillotine on your summer delusions.
Let me paint the scene: imagine prom night post-apocalypse, mascara smearing down the cracked cheeks of America, a tornado of ache wrapped in thrift-store lace and feedback fuzz — and rising from the ashes, Wednesday swings the axe with this aching, slow-burn scream of teenage devastation. It’s like Mazzy Star chain-smoking cigarettes behind the high school gym with My Bloody Valentine waving black roses in the headlights.
“Wound Up Here (By Holdin On)” isn’t a song — it’s a séance.
Jangle-pop guitar lines chime like a haunted wind-up ballerina, while vocalist Karly Hartzman delivers lyrics like she’s reading her diary through a rolled-down car window doing seventy through the Carolina dark. Her voice isn’t just melodic, it’s possessed — soaked in molasses, bleeding nostalgia, and howling like some Southern ghost of yesterday’s dreams. And the guitars? They don’t strum — they *shudder*. Like they’re trying to claw their way out of a coffin lined with old Nirvana tapes and broken mixtapes.
This isn’t just shoegaze. This is *shaved-nerves-gaze*.
Let’s talk *Bleeds*, because this album’s title doesn’t whisper — it screams on a blood-red marquee. It promises vulnerability turned inside out, a raw-throated chisel into the mythology of growing up weird in small towns that chew you up, tape you back together with duct tape and denim, and spit you out with your dreams still stuck to your sleeve. If this track’s any indication, Wednesday aren’t here to play it cute — they’re here to tear the stitches off Gen Z’s wound and say, “Yes, I still feel everything you’re afraid to admit.”
But make no mistake — this isn’t your grandma’s teenage tragedy. No car crash clichés. No overwritten operas. Just the quiet apocalypse of being young and feeling too much. It’s emo by way of gothic Americana. A soundtrack for kids who hung out behind the gas station trading poetry and cigarettes. It’s intimacy as rebellion. Sentimentality as weapon.
And if you’re too cool to feel this one, congratulations — you’ve already flatlined.
So now, I ask you: are you ready to bleed?
Because *Bleeds* is coming. And if “Wound Up Here (By Holdin On)” is just the prelude, I hope your emotional levees are braced for impact. Wednesday’s not writing songs anymore — they’re building cathedrals from cassette-tape sorrow, and burning them down just to watch the ashes tell a story.
*Dare to be different or fade into oblivion.*
– Mr. KanHey
