Sophia Michaels
Wednesday, the up-and-coming rock outfit out of Asheville, North Carolina, have shared an epic new ode to idiotic youthful depravity, “Chosen to Deserve.” The song will appear on the band’s next album, Rat Saw God, out April 7 via Dead Oceans.
As Wednesday’s singer-songwriter/guitarist Karly Hartzman noted in a statement, “Chosen to Deserve” began as “a writing exercise I gave myself to try to recreate the iconic song by Drive-By Truckers ‘Let There Be Rock,’ but with my own experiences from growing up and fucking around and getting into stupid shit.”
Indeed, Hartzman matches DBT’s original with tales of booze, Benadryl, stomach pumps, and backseat fooling around. But the song does turn at the end with some clear-eyed sobriety: “Now all the drugs are gettin kinda boring to me/Now everywhere is loneliness and it’s in everything/Thank God that I was chosen to deserve you/’Cause I’m the girl that you were chosen to deserve.”
“Chosen to Deserve” arrives alongside a music video directed by Spencer Kelly. The clip was filmed, Hartzman notes, in her old childhood haunts, including her parents’ neighborhood in Greensboro, North Carolina and the Lake Myers RV Resort.
Rat Saw God follows Wednesday’s 2021 album, Twin Plagues (they also released a collection of covers, Mowing the Leaves Instead of Piling ’Em Up, last year). The new album was written in the months following the completion of Twin Plagues, and Wednesday recorded it in one week at Drop of Sun studio in Asheville.
Wednesday will embark on a lengthy tour in support of Rat Saw God this spring. The first leg kicks off April 26 at the Earl in Atlanta and wraps May 21 at Basement East in Nashville; following a U.K. and European run, Wednesday will return to North America for a trek that starts June 15 at the Neighborhood Theatre in Charlotte, North Carolina and wraps July 1 with a homecoming show in Asheville. Ticket info is available on Wednesday’s website.
