The Wrens

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

definite bummer but tbh whenever Charles was posting on the Wrens twitter and it had nothing to do with the next album it became frustrating. Which was pretty much all the time.

Feel like with Charles there is this weird mix of complacency ("it's ok to not be done yet, I still have ideas, people are used to the delay") and madness. I mean you could do this with any collection of songs you want. Work on them to perfection, drive them into the ground and burn out, then change the way you play them to whatever degree necessary until they sound fresh again, repeat.

it sounds like more pressure from the label & the rest of the band might have really helped rather than just leaving charles to his own devices to go mad over it

no shade but if charles did in fact take the position that he should be compensated for being the public face of the wrens, while simultaneously keeping them in release limbo, that's really hard to defend

yup

xps lolling at the idea of a smalltime label like Absolutely Kosher exerting "pressure."

they've been signed to sub pop since 2013! they announced they'd signed to a big indie then but it was never revealed who until now. someone from sub pop was even quoted in the article saying that maybe they should have put more pressure on them when charles backed out of releasing the album in 2013

from the article it sounded like he only wanted to renegotiate things after he was ready to release the album again in 2019, but those negotiations dragged out forever & delayed the album until kevin got sick of it & decided to put out his stuff on his own

haha serves me right for not even reading the article

That article is kind of sad, but really the Wrens have been a hobby band for ages. They all have big jobs and enough family stuff to deal with that the best possible outcome (besides one more album) was probably going to be some thoughtful indie documentary about middle aged family men making a final run at it.

well i personally could have gone for another tour because they were the real deal as a live band

Pretty ok…pretty ok: https://www.stereogum.com/2161316/aeon-station-queens/music/

but then greg plugs in

this is alright but the mix is pretty bad. feels like the pieces of a very good wrens song is there but it hasn't quite come together

Perhaps if someone could just tinker with it a few more years maybe

bissell twitter thred

Believe it or not, I only just finally read the NYT piece yesterday, ditto listened to Kevin's single (which admittedly, I have heard 100's of times, & worked on, over the last 10 years), annnnnd...I guess there is a lot to say. Or not.

— the wrens (@thewrens) October 6, 2021

https://soundcloud.com/thewrens/and-its-all-guns-arrows-v10-excerpt-only-as-of-101321

new song snippet from charles

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WRrf8lL5f88

here's the studio "leaves" from kevin, it's good!

…but for the little it’s worth here too, Sub Pop never got an album handed in, not two years ago when it was done, let alone in 2013 or something (magically, before we’d even signed with them somehow - ha). But thanks, bmb!)

— the wrens (@thewrens) October 19, 2021

charles also claims there was never an album submitted to sub pop back in 2013

I’ve already been planning that when I announce my own, I’ll also put up the track listing for the now-deep-sixed wrens record and people could paste their own together.

— the wrens (@thewrens) October 19, 2021

& this will be nice to have

tbh the version of the meadowlands i listen to is pasted together too -- there was an initial mp3 version with a different tracklisting and different versions/titles for like half the songs iirc

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6CXJV4LQG3s

that would be this, iirc it was an early unmastered version they'd sent out to critics & friends before tweaking it a little more for the actual release. the final tracklist is much better imo & the differences in mixes aren't enough for me to really care either way

like i might take the less blown-out early mixes of "per second second" and "everyone chooses sides" over the final versions but it's not a huge difference. iirc the only other difference is some minor things in "ex-girl collection"

i don't miss either of the cut tracks

ah, ty

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0DKl7aAKis8

decent