Wednesday | Bleary Eyed
O2 Academy Leeds, Leeds
24th February 2026
The North Carolina natives ascend to the indie rock big leagues with an incandescent performance in Leeds.
“We’ve got one more song to play, and then you can all gather up your belongings.”
It’s been that kind of gig; Karly Hartzman has been pulling double duty as both frontwoman and lost property officer. This show was originally booked for the Irish Centre across town, but on the back of last year’s sensational sixth album, Bleeds, Wednesday’s star has been in sufficient ascendancy for an upgrade to the Academy. The standing floor is packed, mosh pits break out frequently, and loose articles have apparently not been secured; accordingly, Hartzman finds herself attempting to reunite items with their rightful owners between songs – AirPods, hats, red clogs.
She is the heartbeat of this wonderful North Carolina outfit, a writer of songs that paint vivid portraits of modern American life that are often gorgeous, sometimes galling, and always enthralling. The band truly broke through in 2023, with the magnificent Rat Saw God, an album that touched upon everything from small-town ennui to near-death experiences with a signature sound that lands somewhere between alt-country and shoegaze. The latter side of that palette is something echoed tonight in a superb, atmospheric opening set by Philadelphia band Bleary Eyed, who drench their alt-pop in reverb.
Since then, they’ve lost guitarist MJ Lenderman, whose solo career has taken him in his own direction. He was, for years, Hartzman’s partner in life as well as art, and his absence is chiefly felt when she directly addresses him on a couple of the Bleeds tracks. Lead single Elderberry Wine is a case in point, its breezy Americana undercut by stinging regret: “said I wanna have your baby/cause I freckle and you tan.”
Otherwise, though, this show feels like a testament to how swiftly and pointedly Wednesday have been able to move on without a key member; playing venues of this size is representative of promotion to the indie rock big leagues, and they don’t look even remotely out of place. They toe the line between refinement and rancour brilliantly; opener Reality TV Argument Bleeds explodes into melody at its first chorus, while Wound Up Here (By Holdin On) is faithful to the moodier, punkier side of Rat Saw God.
As always, the stakes vary in Hartzman’s profoundly provocative writing; one minute, she is taking on true crime with Carolina Murder Suicide, on which she tackles the thorny subject of South Carolina’s 2021 Murdaugh murders, and the next, she is smoking weed under a Christmas tree on the gentle Phish Pepsi, which features the unforgettable line “we watched a Phish concert and Human Centipede/two things I now wish I had never seen.”
Where the proof is really in the pudding, though, is in the audience response tonight; this is surely as rowdy a crowd as the Academy has seen in some time, with a whole generation of indie rockers revering this band for their poetic understanding of matters both universal – they are expert purveyors of loss and longing – and urgent; Hartzman leads a full-throated roar against ICE and in support of Palestine before the scorching closing one-two of Bull Believer and Wasp. On this evidence, it will be Wednesday all year in 2026.
~
Wednesday can be found at their Facebook | Instagram | website
Words by Joe Goggins: find him on X here
Neil Chapman is a photographer and occasional writer based in Leeds. His assorted works can be found at his Unholy Racket site as well as Instagram, and Facebook
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