It’s December, and I’m still playing “Elderberry Wine.” That’s the test, isn’t it? May releases that survive past their album cycle.
Wednesday dropped this as the fourth track from their forthcoming Bleeds album on 21 May, their first new music since Rat Saw God broke them in 2023.
And look, I’ll be honest upfront: this is Wednesday in their sweet spot. Not the full noise freakouts, not the whisper-quiet ballads, but that middle ground where Xandy Chelmis’s pedal steel does the heavy lifting and Karly Hartzman’s lyrics cut without needing to shout.
The Sound
“Ain’t heard that voice in a long time / Had to check back there to make sure you were alive.” That’s how Hartzman opens this thing, and it’s the kind of line that makes you stop scrolling. Relationship present but not really present, you know?
Chelmis on pedal steel though. Christ, he never misses. The instrument weeps through this track in ways that shouldn’t work in 2025 but absolutely does.
Producer Alex Farrar gets it right here, finding that balance Wednesday does best when they’re firing on all cylinders. MJ Lenderman’s backing vocals and guitar add texture, but honestly? This is Xandy’s show.
Some fans want Wednesday to go full sludge. Others want more of those delicate, fingerpicked ballads. Me? I keep coming back to tracks like this, anyone, “Formula One”?
That’s where Wednesday actually sounds like Wednesday, not Wednesday doing their Unwound impression or Wednesday going full Townes Van Zandt.
Hartzman told someone (can’t remember which interview, there were loads when this dropped) that she brings guitar and words, thematic vision locked in, and her bandmates build the sonic architecture around it.
You can hear that process in the chorus, where Andy (sorry, Xandy, force of habit) uses pedal steel feedback to create this emotional swell that country music typically runs from. It’s clever without being showy.
When Sweet Things Turn Poison
Right, the metaphor. Hartzman’s sister ate raw elderberries once and immediately vomited. Elderberries are healing when prepared correctly, poison when they’re not.
That’s the whole song: love, family, success, all of it can turn toxic without the right environment.
“‘Elderberry Wine’ is about the potential for sweet things in life to become poison if not prepared for and attended to correctly,” Hartzman said in the press release. “It’s ultimately a love song about creating just the right environment for fulfilment. There’s a delicate balance that needs to be created, especially in love, for two lives to intersect without poisoning each other.”
That’s a generous reading of what’s clearly a pretty fraught relationship song, but fair play to her for framing it that way.
The chorus hammers it home: “‘Cause the champagne tastes like elderberry wine / And the pink boiled eggs stay afloat in the brine.” Southern Gothic meets your gran’s kitchen.
Even champagne, that symbol of luxury and celebration, registers as homemade wine. Not about quality, about conditions.
The verses nail the specificity: driving someone to the airport with the E-brake on (perfect metaphor for self-sabotage), that “angel hum of an electric car” (Hartzman even joked to Rolling Stone that mentioning electric cars probably killed her timelessness goal), checking the backseat to make sure someone’s still breathing.
These aren’t grand romantic gestures. They’re the mundane cracks where love fails or somehow doesn’t.
“I think a love song done right admits some of the darker aspects of loving someone and some of the compromises you have to make,” Hartzman said in that same Rolling Stone piece. She’s not wrong. The best love songs live in that compromise space.
The Video and The Context
Director Spencer Kelly shot the video at The Bench in Greensboro, North Carolina, second-oldest bar in the city. Everyone in it’s a regular, including Hartzman’s dad George.
A bloke walks in, watches horse racing, Hartzman (playing bartender) changes the channel to Wednesday performing, his face says “What the fuck?” That’s the whole video. Kelly called it “a love letter to places like this, where the sense of community runs deep and the beers are always cold.”
It works because it doesn’t try too hard. Just captures bar culture as it exists.
Now, the elephant: MJ Lenderman’s not touring with Wednesday anymore. His last show with them was January 4th in Chiba, Japan. He and Hartzman broke up during that tour.
He co-wrote this track (along with Chelmis, Ethan Baechtold, and Alan Miller), so these songs are about their relationship, and Hartzman told GQ she “was numb during those sessions. I had to be. [Lenderman] and I had written so many songs about each other and our relationship over the years, including these, and I just needed to get them out.”
His solo success with Manning Fireworks is massive, so he’s not coming back to the Wednesday lineup. That stings for fans, because their dynamic created something special. “Elderberry Wine” becomes both a document of what they achieved together and a bit of a goodbye. Not ideal, but there it is.
Why It Sticks
Alt-country revival could mean just copying the past, slap some pedal steel on indie rock and call it a day. Wednesday don’t do that.
They took traditional sounds (pedal steel, country song structures, Southern Gothic imagery) and ran them through indie rock sensibilities and millennial relationship anxiety.
The result admits compromise, embraces imperfection, recognises that sometimes the best champagne really does taste like elderberry wine.
That’s the point. That’s why I’m still playing this in December.
Wednesday performed this on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert back in May, their TV debut. The band (Hartzman, Chelmis, Miller, and Baechtold) released Bleeds in September, and tracks like this show why it’s worth your time.
Even in transition, even with lineup changes and breakups in the rearview, they’ve found that delicate balance Hartzman keeps singing about. Not perfect. Just honest. That’ll do.
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