It’s only fitting that Wednesday returns on a Wednesday. The indie rockers are back with the new single “Elderberry Wine.”
The track opens with Karly Hartzman’s razor-sharp lines (“Aint heard that voice in a long time/Had to check back there to make sure you were alive”), with MJ Lenderman on backing vocals and guitar. Xandy Chelmis rounds it out with cozy lap steel, making it a warm welcome back for the band.
“‘Elderberry Wine’ is about the potential for sweet things in life (love, family, success) to become poison if not prepared for and attended to correctly,” Hartzman explains. “Elderberry is known as a healing fruit, and is an ingredient in many tonics and syrups to aid the immune system. One time, however, my sister consumed them raw and it immediately induced vomiting. So ‘Elderberry Wine’ is ultimately a love song about creating just the right environment for fulfillment. There’s a delicate balance that needs to be created, especially in love, for two lives to intersect without poisoning each other.”
The video above opens with a man driving to a bar, where Hartzman is serving drinks. He’s eagerly watching a horse race, until Hartzman changes the channel to the band performing the single, resulting in him mouthing, “What the fuck?”
According to director Spencer Kelly, the video was shot at the Bench in Greensboro, North Carolina, the city’s second-oldest bar. “We came in with some specific scripted scenes, but we wanted to capture the bar as authentically as possible, so everyone you see in the video is a regular, including Karly’s dad, George,” he said in a statement. “This video is a bit of a love letter to places like this, where the sense of community runs deep and the beers are always cold.”
“Elderberry Wine” marks Wednesday’s first new music since their 2023 breakthrough album Rat Saw God. The band (Hatzman, Lenderman, Chelmis, Alan Miller, and Ethan Baechtold) will perform the single this evening on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, making their television debut.
Wednesday will hit two festivals this year: Project Pabst on the weekend of July 26 and Best Friends Forever on the weekend of Oct. 10. But amid his massive solo success with his recent LP Manning Fireworks, Lenderman will no longer be touring with the band. He told GQ that his last show with them was on January 4 in Chiba, Japan; he and Hartzman broke up during that tour.
In that same interview, Hartzman spoke about the band’s new music, recorded after her split with Lenderman. “I was numb during those sessions. I had to be,” she said. “[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.”
