Crucial Track for January 20, 2026

"Townies" by Wednesday

#365songs (20 / 365)

Sometimes you just gotta take that leap of faith with music. I've described my own music listening habits as "purchasing music I want to like and bullying myself into liking it" and while that's somewhat hyperbolic it's more or less what I did with Wednesday's most-recent-as-of-this-writing album Bleeds. I still find music mostly by reading things — other people's opinions, generally — and I saw a lot of ecstatic praise for their last album Rat Saw God. I sampled a track or two and it sounded like kinda scrappy but unremarkable rock music to me, and it didn't grab me enough to stick with it. Then Bleeds came around and I guess I must have heard something in it that convinced me to plunk down the $10 or whatever for it. Once I've spent real money on an album I can generally let the sunk cost fallacy do the rest.

"Townies" is a reminder that that leap of faith can pay off, and that music that doesn't surprise or delight or shock on first listen can still have those effects as it unfolds in subsequent ones. Karly Hartzman has a wonderful and expressive voice and she uses the hell out of it here. The wild melodic swings are tied to pivots in the lyrics and make them even more hard-hitting, and after two stories of meanness and betrayal in the verses there's a raspy, exhausted resignation to the absolution she offers in the bridge.

I don't know if "Townies" will stick with me or not, or how much I'll still be listening to Bleeds in six months or a year, but right now it just feels nice to listen to a new album of straight-up rock music by a band I'd never really listened to before this year and be like, yeah, sometimes rock music is pretty fuckin' good.