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Flexible and imaginative: Wednesday at the Roundhouse reviewed

22 0
05.03.2026

How is it that two things that are fundamentally the same can be completely different? Two bands, each harking back to a specific historical reference point in heavy music, each using distortion and volume as an important part of their presentation. Standing just outside the big old turntable shed’s main room you could just hear them and easily imagine Wednesday and Airbourne following each other on some festival stage and sharing the same audience.

Not so much inside the room, though. Wednesday, however they might care to describe themselves, are currently a grunge band, but with a singer-songwriter, Karly Hartzman, who dwells more in introspection and observation than rage and self-flagellation. So the big crunchy riffs come with interestingly sketched scenarios: ‘Catchin’ up with the townies/ Some have gone but most are still around/ The ghosts of them surround me/ They hang on tight until they drown,’ she sang on ‘Townies’; what a great set-up.

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© The Spectator