In 2023, the band
Wednesday enjoyed a well-deserved critical and commercial breakthrough with their third album, the outstanding
Rat Saw God, and their lead guitarist,
MJ Lenderman, saw his solo career take off with the release of 2024's excellent
Manning Fireworks. The independent
Julia's War label took notice of the new good fortune of their friends and remembered that they had helped distribute a cassette-only EP credited to
MJ Lenderman &
Wednesday, 2021's
Guttering. In 2025, the label gave the EP a reissue, making the material available on vinyl for the first time.
Guttering certainly deserves to be heard by a wider audience than had caught up with it in the past, but it may not connect with
Wednesday's or
Lenderman's newer fans. While
Wednesday were never afraid of being noisy, this material is decidedly lo-fi, with the performances enveloped in a cloud of distortion and aural fog, and the finer details of
Karly Hartzman's and
Lenderman's vocals sometimes get lost in the mix. (Comparing the clarity of
Greg Sage's recording of "Sacrifice [For Love]" and the layers of purposeful murk on the cover that appears here is instructive.) Given
Wednesday's well-documented love of shoegaze-style guitars, the grain of this music isn't outside their comfort zone, and
Hartzman and
Lenderman are striving to create a moodier, more deliberate approach than they try when they're in full rock mode. And while the songs don't sound like A-list material for
Hartzman or
Lenderman, "Terminex" and "Phish Pepsi" are deep cuts that are well worth hearing.
Guttering plays like a lo-fi project that was meant to be an experiment more than a high-profile release, and in that context, it's something loyal fans will appreciate, though this isn't as user-friendly or as deeply satisfying as
Rat Saw God or
Manning Fireworks. And it probably wasn't meant to be. ~ Mark Deming
