Save this article to read it later.
Find this story in your accountsSaved for Latersection.
Karly Hartzman turns her laptop camera and points to the graying houses just past her faded green front yard.
Shes showing me where her neighbor Amanda lives.
Shes just fucking crazy, she says.
Ever the neighborhood menace, she returns on Wednesdays new album,Rat Saw God.
Somebody called the cops on Mandy and her boyfriend, Hartzman sings on Quarry.
When they busted in they found that her house was a front for a mob thing.
Its mostly true, Hartzman tells me: the yelling, the boyfriend, the cop call.
No mob ties, though as far as she knows.
She was probably in trouble for screaming at night or something.
This is how Wednesday songs work.
(Even the title of their new album comes fromVeronica Mars.)
But once those details are in her hands, anything can happen.
When Hartzman was younger, she loved poring over the list of references in the DVD booklets forGilmore Girls.
Theres so much stuff thatll go over your head, she says.
Now, Wednesday songs can feel the same way.
The same thing happened with the noise at the beginning ofTwin Plagues.
Oh, a thesis.
Its like a thesis statement for where Ive been at this past year, for sure.
And it sets the setting as Asheville and the South, obviously.
We have a huge swath of land.
And when the grass is cut, the smell is overwhelming.
So theyre all connected, but theyre just disparate memories that have the same tone.
I definitely collect stuff by tone.
Theres just so much to talk about with that line.
Everything leading up to that line is giving myself time to get in the headspace of that night.
That was a memory from high school, so it took me three albums to reflect on it.
But the actual physical writing of the song happened pretty quickly once I gave myself permission to go there.
Especially in a performance space.
The last line of that verse, the internet tells me, is from St. Augustine.
How did that end up there?Thats funny.
She quotes it in there, and I was like,That is fucking genius.Just another thing I collected.
Its like our voices are meant to be together in a lot of songs.
The song is about him and settling into our relationship too.
We have a very natural thing going with our music.
Its kind of hard to describe.
I let my bandmates follow their desires.
That last line, was that something that he said?Its Richard Brautigan.
But that is such a Jake line, he loves that line.
But hearing you singing it, theres this almost detachment in the way youre delivering it.
Tell me about making that choice.Thats kind of the story I tell at parties now.
And we would just do anything.
So I woke up the next morning, after we had done that.
What were yall doing?
It was like my first confrontation with someone my age dying.
And it was so overwhelming.
Ive never felt more guilty in my life ever.
Now I look back on it and laugh.
So yeah, I do have a detachment.
That was part of the healing process.
Ultimately, this is also a love song.
[Laughs] That was something I had to confront from a very early age.
Judaism is such a chill religion.
Theres no fear in it.
All the fear I had of being Jewish was coming from outside.
My mom has stained-glass crosses in the house just cause she thinks theyre pretty.
We would get a Christmas tree, but then we would also celebrate Hanukkah.
It was just so fucking confusing.
Im still parsing out,How was I raised?
What a weird circumstance I was in.I think its endlessly analyzable.
And I will say, it wasnt traumatizing.
I throw around that word a lot to describe a lot of stuff [laughs].
It was just interesting.
Tell me about hearing that story growing up.
Theres a huge field by their house and it has power lines now.
Ive been running around this field my whole childhood.
Once, he was like, This used to be a field of really tall grass.
It wasnt cotton, that just fit better in the line.
I didnt even tell my parents it was happening, like someone else called the fire department.
They still dont know it was me.
And that story has stuck with me since middle school.
Its on a long list of stories I wanna write into songs eventually.
My dad was like, Yeah, I remember when that happened.
And my uncle was like, I dont.
I blacked it out.
Do you not remember?
Tonally, it was very obvious.
I read that this song was put together on tour.
Some artists arent able to write on the road.
I collected all the lines while we were in the van.
So I was taking stuff that anyone would see if they were driving in a car on the road.
Not necessarily like, During sound check, blah blah blah.
It gets really exhausting, and you have no time to catch up with yourself on tour.
Have you been writing since recording this album?Next albums written, ready to go.
Im always having to catch up with myself in the studio.
It happens every time.
This interview has been edited and condensed.
