Concert Review: Wednesday And Hotline TNT (Lincoln Theatre)

Hotline TNT and Wednesday's Karly Hartzman
BY PIXIE HOCKER

Wednesday kicked off a weekend run in their home state of North Carolina on Friday night at the Lincoln Theatre in Raleigh before stopping in Winston-Salem and Boone. Taking the stage to warm up the crowd was Hotline TNT, who did just that!


Hotline TNT mostly ripped through songs from their 2022 album, Cartwheel, but they also mixed in a few songs from their other releases. Not to mention, in between playing their original releases, they also covered The Smashing Pumpkins' "Quiet," which the crowd absolutely loved. Hotline TNT was undeniably a very fitting band to open for Wednesday.


To close out their set and really make sure the crowd was prepared for Wednesday, Hotline TNT played "Had 2 Try" from their 2021 album, Nineteen In Love, and Karly Hartzman, Wednesday’s lead singer, surprised the audience by coming out to sing along with them. We all should have seen this coming since Wednesday covered the Hotline TNT song for their 2022 cover album, Mowing the Leaves Instead of Piling ‘em Up.


Wednesday played two unreleased songs, one to kick off their set and another about growing up in Greensboro, which they mentioned they had never played live before. It felt it was only right for them to play the Greensboro song for the first time with several of the bandmates' hometown friends and Karly’s dad in the audience. Karly said it herself, the shows that her dad attends are their best shows and I’ve seen them a few times live and she wasn’t lying!


Like Hotline TNT, they mostly played songs from their most recent release, 2023's Rat Saw God. But they also worked in a few from Twin Plagues as well as “Fate Is...” from I Was Trying to Describe You to Someone. Wednesday prefaced their last song with the fact that they don’t do encores because Karly can’t keep singing after their eight-and-a-half-minute scream session that is “Bull Believer,” but I doubt the crowd would have been able to keep singing along after that either.

PIXIE HOCKER
Pixie Hocker has loved music for as long as they can remember and has gone to more concerts than she can count. Pixie is the Music Director at her college station 90.5 WASU-FM and hosts a bi-weekly specialty show at Boone Area Community Radio.

Read Pixie's posts here.

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