Music Feeds’ Love Letter To A Record series asks artists to reflect on their relationship with the music they love and share stories about how it has influenced their lives. Here, Sydney alt-rock phantom wendsday (or just W, if you’re cool) shares their love for Chappell Roan’s hit 2023 debut studio album, ‘The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess’. It comes as wednesday returns swinging with their second-ever release, ‘I’m Fine Thanks’ – a snarling, hyper-caffeinated takedown of Australia’s class system that lands like a molotov cocktail wrapped in bubblegum.
Out now via We Don’t Exist Records, the track channels the scrappy heart-on-sleeve energy of Sly Withers, Jeff Rosenstock and Weezer, but with a distinctly fried, doomscrolly Sydney twist. Produced by Clint Topic at Newcastle’s Sawtooth Studios, ‘I’m Fine Thanks’ thrashes with grit, charm and that barely-holding-it-together mania that feels uniquely modern – or, as W puts it, “a scream into the ear of every YouTube business guru and Martin Place broker” still peddling the fantasy that capitalism is a fair game. The song pulls no punches as it spirals through stoicism, vape-fuelled existentialism and the sluggish death of the Australian dream.
wednesday – ‘I’m Fine Thanks’
wednesday: Would that it were, that I, wendsday (who has a new single called ‘I’m Fine Thanks’) could see sound in all of its vividness. To be able to touch it, like so many records in their sleeves. Alas, I am relegated to the hollow depths of my ear canals, which run dry and spartan without your
record to fill them up with stellar pop-music. It is there where the lonely spirit of ‘me’ resides
(yes, in my earholes) like the ghastly and most spectacularly sticky gunk that I am–awaiting your
record be played again, tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow.
OH, CHAPPELL ROAN! As I write this my keyboard aches and groans under the weight of how
much thy loved your record ‘The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess’. It remains to this day,
a revelation in pop and the merits of individualism. It is an anomaly in the often broken
songwriting spectrometer of today. Yes, it is an anomaly, as are you Roan, in this baron
landscape of AI music and facsimile artistry with its golem singer-songwriters, summoned into
existence by the unbreakable spell of endless label investment capital and a fleet of faceless
hit-makers lining up to do their part.
From the first beat of the opener ‘Femininomenon’ and its knock-you-down chainsaw rip into
‘Play the fucking beat!’, I knew that the arrow of Eros (or ‘Cupid’ if you’re Catholically inclined)
had pierced my unworthy, lazy heart. Betwixt each track I went! Stumbling about in bloody
delirium through the audacious range of genre mastery (and on a debut, no less!), breathless at
the new form of ballads on ‘Casual’. Then, possessed and ravished by glittery pink club demons
on Super Graphic Ultra Modern Girl’; utterly compelled to dance around my kitchen making
pancakes well past the witching hour (this song did make me rather self-conscious about my
collection of jeans, but no matter).
By ‘HOT TO GO!’ I was completely vanquished. Just…atoms. I only came back to solid form just
now (and only to ink this letter, after which I will disassemble again). Now, I hope it’s OK to even
utter this meagre bastardisation of your exquisite lyricism for the purposes of editorial ballyhoo:
but, oh, baby did I like this beat.
‘Surely the sublime nature of this record couldn’t keep pace!’, I thought as the record played.
And then, for fun it seems, you ran rings around Taylor Swift at her own game with ‘My Kink Is
Karma’. Just because you could. BUT, OH CHAPPELL! There’s ‘Kaleidoscope’, too. Which to
me was a lonely crash-landing of two spacecrafts on two separate and desolate planets, both
named heartache. I was left stranded there, too. Until you portalled me to the ‘Pink Pony Club’,
where I found my giddy-up again.
I could go on (and on and on). But you’ll probably never read this, Chappell. This, my base &
unrequited love letter, a version two, written at the uninhabited hour of 2.00am because I didn’t
like what I’d penned at a more civilised time. But on the total off-chance that you ever do,
Chappell ‘The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess’ is nothing short of a wonder that has had
me pushing my upcoming release as far as it can go within the paltry means of my talent in the
context of your own. The world didn’t know we desperately needed it, but know that we are
grateful. Keep feeling the world in the way you do. Rise.
Yours in screen-glow and a fugue-state of besottedness,
wendsday
Further Reading:
Love Letter To A Record: Forever Ends Here On The Band CAMINO’s ‘The Dark’
Love Letter To A Record: All Time Low On Blink-182’s ‘Self-Titled’
