The Wrens

going back not to the recorded songs but to the songs themselves because mastering "revealed them as not so good" is a pretty intense stance. never heard of it really. like, when a track's mixed, ok. but mastering exposed something missing in the actual song? wild

overworked maybe

I had a sad chuckle at that

lol this album is never going to be finished

ffs even D’Angelo, dr dre and MBV have released their albums by now

I would be more annoyed about it but Charles seems a bit fragile and tbh it's probably for the best that he take his time! (and it's not like he/they have D'Angelo or MBV-level fanbases or resources to help them out...)

i can only imagine how much has been spent during this process. i mean they went to abbey road nine years ago

they didn't start working on it properly until 2010 or 2011 iirc

i don't blame charles for taking his time, especially with the health issues he's had and not having the resources to work on it full-time, but it's a bit sad that he doesn't seem to have the confidence to just let it be done, like deciding to re-write half the tracks after they've been mastered just seems bizarre

congratulations to the Wrens for cutting out a section of one of their still-unreleased songs and releasing it on its own, resulting in the best guided by voices song ever

I've lost myself to work
and lost Betsys to heaven
hard drives damn(ed) Kevin's house
putting demos of this down
please let these forfeit years put up profit and then some
fear far more handsome men come
able, funded, crowned

https://soundcloud.com/thewrens/and-its-all-guns-arrows-cut-bridge-as-of-122317

i rolled my eyes at this stalling tactic and then listened to it about 30 times -- it's so good!

this is like the fourth time they've done it, too

when charles is finally done with the album, he clearly should spend another decade stitching all the parts of songs he cut out into a new album

he says it's going to be done "next week" there so maybe we'll actually get it next year... lol

yeah sure

This boggles the mind - 240 gigobytes for one song! Content warning - the actual song isn't included here.

http://www.wrens.com/news-etc/2019/8/1/too-big-to-fail

"180-some tracks" on one song feels about right tbh

I hope Merge or whoever understands that idiots like me would pay good money for a release format that somehow contained this entire dumb archive

just stumbled across charles' latest update - as of a week ago the recording & mixing is done after being 'almost done' for the past 5 years or so

looking forward to 5+ years of updates on how the mastering is going

lol the meadowlands was #1 on my 2000s albums poll and even i've long given up on this album

if anyone in NYC wants to hear new Wrens material this week

Howdy,

If you wanna hear some of this now-done 10-year Odyssey of a recording (a not-pun that’ll be more clear when the record comes out), I’m gonna be doing a solo set of some of the songs (accompanied by my usual hide-me veil of loop pedal shenanigans), this Wed., January 8th around 6:30pm.

What makes this esp. nifty is that it’s for the closing party for the artist Beth Campbell’s (an actual genius and just my favorite) own solo show, How Do You Know I Am Not A Liar, at the Kate Werble Gallery (83 Vandam St., NYC (Beth’s show runs through this Friday, 1/10/20).

That’s the short of it: Album 4.5 songs, this Wed., 1/8/20, 6:30 at the Kate Werble Gallery.

Swing on by after work, Manhattan professionals.

The longer of it, where I first saw Beth’s work, and later how I got to know her and our still coming-together plan to collaborate re: this next record, is one of those fireside chats I roll out at these ‘come hear the record in our house’ things and even ties into to why I do them to begin with (which speaking of, one last round of those too starting Sunday, 3/1/20. But more on that later)….

Lol this new album is never coming out

idk i think it's actually vaguely possible it finally comes out this year considering all the "it's done for real this time it's finally mixed and i've stopped doing new overdubs at last" posts from around a month ago

this new post (http://www.wrens.com/news-etc/2020/1/29/welcome-back-mr-whelan-birthday-love-letter-to-the-one-at-stage-center) initially reads like kevin has only just started writing & recording new stuff for the record but if you read closely charles mentions he wrote most of the post back in 2013 and kevin has been working on the record with him for years so i don't actually think they've suddenly decided it's not actually done

I used to read all those posts with excitement, then I saw how long this one was and I just tuned out lol

idk i think it's actually vaguely possible it finally comes out this year

hahahahhAHAHAHAHHhahahahahzhahahahahhaa

good thing they can't go back in time and unrelease the meadowlands

don't get me wrong, they'll have written the most gut-wrenchingly self-aware song about "how they're aware they'd said the album was coming out at a timeframe but now that's not the case and you'll find out a teensy weensy bit more after i've fed my chickens update in 2021."

Very proud of and happy for anyone who doesn’t need to finish what they’re working on and therefore doesn’t finish it. True achievement.

OK now that I've read a fuller depiction of Charles' struggles via this long interview I am determined to no longer snark on the long recording time of this album

Exactly how grim it would become, however, was not yet clear. While visiting his in-laws that Thanksgiving, Bissell began feeling severely ill. He and his wife went first to a walk-in clinic and finding that closed, went to a hospital emergency room where Bissell collapsed in the waiting room. He was diagnosed with pneumonia, which led to sepsis. He wound up being placed on a breathing tube and kept in the hospital’s intensive care unit for a week.

“I didn’t know until weeks afterwards, until after I got home, how bad it actually was. My first clue was that on my last night in the hospital they put me in a regular room and the nurse said, ‘I was here the night you were brought in. I didn’t think you were going to make it.’ I was like, ‘Wait…what are you talking about?’” His recovery ended up taking months. “It took me a month or two to be able to walk up the steps without stopping. It was a weird preview of what it’s like to be ninety.”

In 2015, he was hospitalized with pneumonia again, again while visiting his in-laws. He wound up back at the same hospital. This time, he was diagnosed with multiple myeloma, a blood cancer that can cause damage to the kidneys and bones. In the spring of 2016, he began chemotherapy back home in New York. He describes one of the side effects of the therapy as being, “like the most tired you’ve ever been in your life.”

https://aquariumdrunkard.com/2020/03/12/the-comeback-kids-the-wrens-and-their-long-awaited-new-album/

longish new interview

https://uproxx.com/indie/the-wrens-interview-long-wait-meadowlands-followup/

also I did not know that a genuine full new Wrens song was floating around out there

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NrMOgcvOoyE

make that two and they're both long and great? wtf?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pWuoTSoKb44

"crescent" and "as i've known" are two songs actually, but one segues into the other. "crescent" is from 2010 and "as i've known" is from 2011, but i think they're still planned for the album. "three types of reading ambiguity" is from 2015 but i think charles has indicated in the past that he's significantly reworked it since that release (of course)

as usual with album 'news' from them, i'll believe it's done when i have a copy of it

You’ve announced a few times since we last talked that the album is finished and then it never actually came out.

Charles: It was really just to make me finish and hand it in. Somehow if I went ahead and said it out loud, then I’d be forced to be done. But it didn’t really change anything, because I couldn’t solve the songs, I couldn’t figure out how to make them work. So you can want to be done, but that doesn’t mean you will be.

of course lol

"It was really just to make me finish and hand it in." <---me in college

me my whole life

I forgot about "At Irish Exit" which I assume will also be on this and is great even in its current form

There's also a few new-to-me songs on this '09 set

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YfOlYwlOoBU

It's sad that there's so little good Wrens live footage, they seem to have actually been pretty great at the "being a band" thing, hope they get a chance to do it again

Simon you weren't alone in not knowing those two longs new(er) songs. Had no idea! The first one especially is very good. Thanks for linking to the interview. I'm at the point where I'd probably forgive him for murder, my patience is being tested and it seems it's endless :)

yeah I'm glad I hadn't heard "reading ambiguity" in full until now because it has pretty much everything you'd want to hear out of a new wrens song (and will help tide me over until....if/when this album happens)

ah sorry for the bad formatting i thought youtu.be links didn't embed for some reason

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y02edpf9k8k

also everyone should hear their really great cover of R.E.M.'s "Nightswimming"

ok let's try that again without embeds

apparently the versions of "Crescent" and "As I've Known" they released a decade ago were just demos, but they sound very good for demos.

years ago i compiled all the unreleased/unfinished material they've played live or released demos of that i could find, so here's everything that hasn't been mentioned yet. some of it is very rough sketches but other stuff is more fleshed out.

"Whammy Song" (transitions into "This Boy Is Exhausted" in this clip)
"Leaves Ground"/"Leaves"
Sleep" (a demo released on a compilation in 2008): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wso2q70zWWM
"Pulled Fences" (live-in-studio improvisation based on a demo titled "In Turkish Waters" that I can no longer track down at all)
"Marked Up"
"Z"
"The Thousand Do's"
"Well It's Right Then It's Wrong" (a version of this in Simon's video, along with "You Won't Need Me Again" and "Get Out Of This Heartless Town", but this is a longer performance)
untitled songs: 1, 2, 3, 4 & 5 (two songs in this one), 6

there's a few more bits of songs on their soundcloud that Charles has posted over the years: https://soundcloud.com/thewrens

sick roundup, I'm glad I'm not the only one who loves these scraps

We have a dog, a fish, three children, four chickens and two gerbils that I say goodnight to. pic.twitter.com/3oahJNGHIw

— the wrens (@thewrens) July 26, 2021

don't get me wrong, they'll have written the most gut-wrenchingly self-aware song about "how they're aware they'd said the album was coming out at a timeframe but now that's not the case and you'll find out a teensy weensy bit more after i've fed my chickens update in 2021."

― Western® with Bacon Flavor, Thursday, January 30, 2020 2:00 AM (one year ago) bookmarkflaglink

oh well!!

idk what this bump is about but i checked their twitter and charles is saying they're announcing new music this week? like i'll believe it when i hear it but...!

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/20/arts/music/the-wrens-aeon-station.html

kevin is putting out his wrens songs without charles

oh damn

at this point i'm just happy that something's on the way but it's a real shame it's come to this

lol that they really did have the album done back in 2013

i just hope the charles solo album is actually coming out too and he's not going to lose faith in it suddenly and spend another decade tinkering with it lol

i like how the Whelan brothers work at competing pharmaceutical companies

whelan should have done this 15 years ago