An alt-country ode to those who celebrate by trying to get along.
The Title:
What is elderberry wine?
Elderberry wine is a bittersweet, earthy drink made from elderberries. If not made properly, it can taste slightly off—more like a medicinal tonic than a celebration drink. It has a lot of depth, but in a way that tastes like memory. It’s easy to imagine drinking it in a hobbit’s hovel. Its most famous use in cinema is in Arsenic and Old Lace, where two conniving old ladies lure men into their home and poison them with elderberry wine. The only other notable pop culture reference is Elton John’s 1973 song “Elderberry Wine.” It’s not a beverage that comes up often. I certainly had never heard of it before this.
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The Lyrics:
Sweet song is a long con
I drove you to the airport with the E-brake on
Ain’t heard that voice in a long time
Had to check back there to make sure you were alive
I imagine Karly driving a family member to the airport, but she really doesn’t want to. She’s driving as slowly as she possibly can—potentially even damaging her car—playing a love song so they’ll have something to remember her by. Even though they mean something to Karly, they’re sitting in the backseat. Quiet, possibly sleeping. A sibling, maybe? An ex-partner she hasn’t quite gotten over?
Angel hum of an electric car
Reverses towards me
Sometimes in my head I give up and flip the board completely
Her passenger is always pulling away from her—headed toward bigger things. They’re silent, perhaps sophisticated and modern, while Karly is old-school. She wants her engine to roar, her emotions on display. She views this relationship like a chess game—one she’s considered quitting in a spectacular way. She knows she won’t win, but she wants her loss to matter.
But everybody gets along just fine
‘Cause the champagne tastes like elderberry wine
And the pink boiled eggs stay afloat in the brine
‘Cause even the best champagne still tastes like elderberry wine
Karly shifts focus. This song isn’t just about her relationship with the passenger—it’s about how people put on an air of pleasantness even when things are quietly breaking down. You might drink champagne to celebrate, but buy the cheap bottle because it tastes sweet and slightly wrong. Instead of crisp and bubbly, it tastes like fermented fruit juice that sat out too long. You remember the last time you drank it—not because it was good, but because it felt familiar.
Even the best champagne tastes like elderberry wine. It’s a metaphor for disappointment dressed as contentment. Everyone knows how to make do. They carry disappointments and keep going anyway.
—
You’ll cry at commercials
At an unbolted leg scraping against the ground
As the tilt-a-whirl goes around
Karly is back to singing about the same partner. He’s emotionally scattered—more moved by thirty-second commercials than by the woman sitting across from him. He sees art in everything. Karly counters with the most mundane image she can think of: a chair leg scraping the floor—and somehow, even that becomes poetic to him.
Roll one up say it’s mostly CBD
Say I wanna have your baby
‘Cause I freckle and you tan
I find comfort that angels don’t give a damn
This partner still isn’t fully present. Even the act of lighting a joint is undercut—he says it’s “mostly CBD.” There’s no high, no release. He wants to have a child, so he’s sort of in the relationship—at least until something better comes along. But Karly wants more. It’s exhausting to be with someone who’s always halfway gone. This is the person she gets to be with—and he’s never all the way there.
To want a child just to see whether their skin freckles or tans strikes Karly as absurd. If someone were watching your life from the outside, the detail that would matter least is the exact shade of your hypothetical child’s skin—especially between two people who know they aren’t meant to stay together.
And your eyes are the green of tornado sky
The first chorus included a tangible detail: pink boiled eggs floating in brine. That felt like rural atmosphere, something drawn from real life—a hallmark of alt-country. Think Lucinda Williams: “Cat wheels on a gravel road.”
But the second chorus replaces that homespun image with a comparison to tornado sky. Instead of seeing warmth in her partner’s eyes, Karly sees the sickly, ominous green that signals coming destruction. Out of all the things she could think of when she looks at him, this is what rises to the surface.
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The Music:
The #1 thing to highlight is Karly Hartzman’s voice. On most Wednesday records, she sounds like someone who maybe took a few vocal lessons years ago, but who mostly goes to rock shows and screams along with every lyric.
For instance, watch a live clip of Wednesday performing “Bull Believer.” She yells the apex lyric—“Finish him”—again and again over a wave of shoegaze guitars. It’s a little like My Bloody Valentine, but Karly is delivering a full Mortal Kombat incantation at full volume. When you see her sing that live, you know her voice will be hoarse for days.
But “Elderberry Wine” is something else. Karly uses that hoarseness like texture, delivering a pretty, pure vocal with a distinctive edge. On Rat Saw God, her voice wasn’t bad, but it may have been what held the band back from wider appeal. “Chosen to Deserve” is a great song, but she sings it so softly and flatly that it has no dynamic range. Karly seemed to think that singing quietly and emphasizing the crack in her voice would give the song power. It worked in the way Mumblecore movies work: for every person who loves them, nineteen walk away annoyed.
But “Elderberry Wine” avoids that trap. Even die-hard country fans will likely find her voice perfect here. She controls the fragility, using cracks only for emphasis. In the chorus, she finally jumps up to a mezzo-forte and dials back down just in time for the titular line. She sings: “And the champagne tastes like elderberry—wi^ine.” And on the final line, she lets herself leap up into a high register: “El—derber—ry w^i—i—i…i ne.” That moment couldn’t be more beautiful. (Great work, Karly.)
As for the instrumentation—what usually turns me off in country music is the lead instrumentation, especially pedal steel. It often feels cloying or overplayed, like a session player trying to make sure his paycheck is audible. Even in loud country songs, pedal steel has the potential to be subtle and expressive. Xandy Chelmis is likely one of the very best. He always knows what to add and what to leave out, whether it’s screeching distortion in shoegaze or melancholy tenderness in this quiet country track.
MJ Lenderman had a great 2024, releasing Manning Fireworks and scoring a minor chart hit with Waxahatchee on “Right Back To It.” He’s poised to be a major alt-country star. As Wednesday’s secondary vocalist, MJ’s rising profile may have nudged the band into making a real, classic-sounding country song. “Elderberry Wine” sounds so classic, it feels new.
Wednesday knows their audience now. The music video is perfect. It opens with a man in his late 50s driving his Jeep to a bar, where he drinks, watches sports on TV, and plays cards with guys older than he is. The band knows their fans are often 15+ years older than them—people who’ve seen music evolve half a dozen times and just want to feel something familiar again.
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Wednesday is a bit of an enigma. Their influences aren’t obvious, but they seem to pull from ‘70s country, Wowee Zowee-era Pavement, and Loveless-era My Bloody Valentine. I saw a YouTube comment under their cover of Gary Stewart’s “She’s Acting Single (I’m Drinking Doubles)” that said:
> “I remember this song. I never thought I’d hear a shoegaze version of it, but here we are.”
The world at large probably doesn’t want a band that’s only partly traditional country. When they scream through layers of guitar, they likely lose 90% of one audience. When they cater to old guys in bars, they lose the other 90%. But if you stick around for the entire set and never want it to end—you’ve probably just found your new favorite band.
Wednesday does too much. Their pieces don’t make obvious sense together. But what they do has never been done better.
Karly and MJ dated for years. I have a sneaking suspicion MJ is the passenger in “Elderberry Wine.” His biggest solo hit right now is “Wristwatch,” where he brags his watch is “a compass and a cell phone.” It’s one of the saddest brag songs I’ve ever heard, ending with the watch telling him when he’s “all alone.”
There’s clearly history behind the scenes. It’s a minor miracle the band kept MJ as a member, considering both his rising solo career and a relationship with Karly that clearly ended in disappointment. But the band went on and tried to celebrate anyway—to raise a toast when nothing tastes like it should, and still call it home.
Hmm. “Maybe this is the slice of pie that will make me happy…”
Lyrical Content: A-
Overall: 4.5/5
Avidavr: Media Reviews 