Wednesday Shines at Sold-Out Grog Shop Show

Midway through Wednesday’s set at the Grog Shop Sunday night, guitarist Jake Lenderman remarked that the venue in Cleveland Heights’ Coventry neighborhood was pretty toasty.

He was right, but that’s what happens when a band on the rise plays a 400-capacity venue. It’s going to sell out, and it’s going to get awfully warm.

“I’m sure y’all had something to do with this,” lead singer and guitarist Karly Hartzman added.

Temperature aside, Wednesday’s 70-minute set showed that the band, whose sound veers from country rock to deafening psychedelia, is primed for bigger things.

A lot has changed for the band in recent years, which Hartzman noted by recalling its last show in the Cleveland area, in the now-closed basement venue at Mahall’s in Lakewood. Hartzman said she remembered 20 people attending. The Asheville, North Carolina band is touring behind Rat Saw God, one of the best albums of last year, which won them a legion of new fans.

On Sunday, the quintet — which also includes pedal and lap steel guitar player Xandy Chelmis, bassist Ethan Baechtold and drummer Alan Miller — took the stage to Warren Zevon’s “Boom Boom Mancini” and launched into a cover of Edie Brickell’s moody “Ghost of a Dog.”

From there the band was off, playing a mix of songs from their entire career, including a couple of new ones (a new album is mostly done, but won’t see the light of day for a little bit still). The crowd responded in kind, with many of them finding ways to mosh to even the slowest songs.

The band settled into a groove early on and got tighter and more powerful as the night went on. For every country-inflected song like “Chosen to Deserve” or “Formula One,” there was a hard-hitter like “Fate Is…” or “Turkey Vultures.” Hartzman, wearing a Drive-By Truckers cap, went from crooning to full-on screaming, and everything in between.

But each band member stood out in their own way. Chelmis’ contributions were audible throughout the night, adding beautiful lines to songs like “Cody’s Only.” And Lenderman, who leads his own project under the name MJ Lenderman with several of his Wednesday bandmates, delivered tasteful guitar playing that always fit Hartzman’s songs.

The band ended with three rockers, including set closer “Bull Believer,” a Rat Saw God standout. Hartzman introduced it by encouraging the crowd to scream along if they too were mad about the U.S. giving money to Israel as the latter carries out bombings in Gaza.

The song, which stretched to 10 minutes, grew in intensity as it wore on. Hartzman’s whispering of the lyrics “finish him,” with her head cocked to the left, soon turned into a blood-curdling wordless scream. The band, led by Miller’s powerful drumming, then played even louder to match her energy.

It was a stunning ending that showed the full range of the band’s capabilities, and what it could do with them as its career progresses.

Indie rockers Hotline TNT opened the show with a tight 45-minute set of shoegaze-y tunes. The Brooklyn outfit, which is touring behind its sophomore album Cartwheel, mines many of the same sounds as the headliner but spits them out in a completely different way.

Onstage, the three-guitar band is not above a few bouts of showmanship and antics, such as when lead singer Will Anderson let an audience member play his guitar during an instrumental breakdown. But overall, the biggest attraction was how the quintet projected a more muscular and punkier sound than on record. This benefitted songs like “Are U Faded?” and set closer “Had 2 Try,” which featured Hartzman on vocals.

Eric Heisig is a freelance writer in Cleveland. He can be reached at eheisig@gmail.com.

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