Country Rock

The members of Wednesday are scattered across town when NME calls them for a Zoom chat. Drummer Alan Miller is at home in Durham, North Carolina, four hours from where the others live in Asheville, his basement still decorated from a recent party. Guitarist and lap steel player Xandy Chelmis is in a bustling café, where he takes breaks from the farm he’s been building, while his playful bandmate Jake Lenderman is hunched in his van in a library car park – “I’ve never been inside,” he quips. And vocalist Karly Hartzman, thoughtful and articulate, is crouched in the “Amish romance” section of a Barnes & Noble bookshop. “I tried to pick a part that isn’t very populated, and I think I found the perfect place,” she says in a hushed tone.

It turns out last-minute home WiFi issues had forced the band into some strange locales, but these background snapshots of North Carolina suburbia are suited to our conversation about Wednesday’s music. On their third album ‘Rat Saw God’, out April 7, Hartzman tells tales of her adolescence and childhood that are full of specific details of small town life, whether amusing or brutally morbid. It’s a coming-of-age story set in the American South, soundtracked by gritty, rip-roaring country-rock.

Melbourne-based Yorta Yorta artist Scott Darlow uses his new single ‘Deadly Heart’ to explore the Nation’s ability to really walk as one with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. A duet with The Jezabels’ Hayley Mary, the new single asks tough questions interested the how you elicit change to work towards a stronger and united future while remembering an important past.

Darlow grew up abroad as his father travelled for work, but this unconventional childhood gave him an insight into always being the outsider. This unique perspective has fed into his music which often explores the complexities of Indigenous and non-Indigenous relations.

“Deadly Heart is something I tried to write that’s parallel and horizontal simultaneously. On the one hand, it’s about a couple just trying to stay together. But it's also about a nation that’s trying to come together. I wrote it through the pandemic, about us as a nation continuing to journey together and listen to each other. To sit and listen to each other's stories, so they can become our stories.”

Darlow says he creates music for his family and his community.

“It sounds silly, but I'm just trying to be the best version of myself that I can be every day. But you know, every day I get up and I want to make a difference for Aboriginal people in everything that I do. I know that sounds cliched, but it's just the truth of it. What can I do next week to make a difference? If I can do that through my music and someone takes away a better understanding of what I’m trying to get across, that’s what it’s about for me. “

For over a decade, Darlow has been a mainstay of Australia’s Indigenous and Independent music industry. His versatility as a singer-songwriter, guitarist, yidaki player and authentic storyteller has made him a fan favourite worldwide. So far, his career has included being the

opening act for Jimmy Barnes and Eskimo Joe, his previous albums selling more than 50,000 worldwide and being added nationally to rock radio multiple times.He was the first act signed to the late Michael Gudinski’s new record label Reclusive Records and with his first album from this new partnership due later this year, 2023 is going to solidify his position as an artist with something to say.