Over the course of the ten songs on "Rat Saw God", the band Wednesday from Asheville, North Carolina build a shrine full of exciting details: half funny, half tragic messages from the southern states, which unfold sonically somewhere between the whimpering skuzz of nineties shoegaze and classic country twang - with distorted pedal steel and front woman Karly Hartzman, who cuts through the noise with her voice.

A Wednesday song is like a quilt. A collection of short stories, a blurred memory, a patchwork of portraits of the American South that captures disparate moments and yet somehow makes sense as a whole. Karly Hartzman, the songwriter, singer, guitarist and leader of the band, is a story collector as well as a storyteller: a keen observer of people and witty remarks. "Rat Saw God", the new and best album by the quintet from Asheville, is ekphrastic, but also autobiographical and, above all, very empathetic. It was written in the months immediately following the completion of the band's second album, "Twin Plagues", and recorded within a week at Drop Of Sun Studio in Asheville.