The Wrens

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

I really like this one, and it reminds me in a weird way of Clint Conley's non-Mission of Burma band Consonant.

https://www.theguardian.com/music/2021/nov/24/its-repulsive-to-me-the-bitter-feud-of-indie-rockers-the-wrens

Whelan showing some patient company exec vibes on something that I imagine would be driving him nuts were that band stuff taking place in his actual day job.

oof.

this doesn't really explain the conflict any further, the previous piece said the big issue was the album had been pretty much done since 2019 but charles wanted to renegotiate contracts or something which dragged everything out and caused conflicts and was the last straw etc.

while this one just makes it seem like kevin was frustrated with charles for taking too long without getting into whatever the contracts dispute was actually about

https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/music/features/aeon-station-interview-kevin-whelan-b1959977.html

a bit more insightful

kevin gave charles an ultimatum (that he'd quit, but no mention of a solo album, piecing their stories together?) if the album wasn't ready for release by march & then followed through

charles says it was pretty much done by 2019 but then in preparing for release the band fell apart (due to his attempts to renegotiate contracts as mentioned elsewhere) & thus the album was still not ready to be released & now feels very betrayed that kevin recorded a solo album without telling him after quitting

but without the details of what the actual contractual shit that they fell out over it's hard to have much idea of who's in the right or anything

just a very depressing end, hope charles gets his act together & his album is out before long too (lol)

Charles seems quite clearly to be the problem, from the available info.

idk it's hard for me to take the side of a big pharma exec, a career of evil

Ⓓⓡ. (Johnny Fever) at 10:28 16 Nov 21

I really like this one, and it reminds me in a weird way of Clint Conley's non-Mission of Burma band Consonant.

I love that band!

i'm just so fucking bummed about about this. the long Independent piece says the best Bissell tracks are "astounding" and it just sucks that it all came to this. the most fucking wrens ass shit.

kevin's album is out tomorrow and the latest track from it is excellent

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uaGZMXKWwP8

charles better come through with his own album before too long lol.

I feel like in many years we’ll someday somehow get the “lost album” as it should have been.

probably in like, two decades given the time scales they operate on

charles has promised to release the intended tracklist too so people can frankenstein it out of his solo album & kevin's for the time being

I listened to some of The Meadowlands again - feels even more bittersweet than ever before. Not sure if this is good or bad, as bittersweetness is the essential character of the record. Probably a good thing to not get too nostalgic about anything.

Everyone Choose Sides still slams extremely hard.

aeon station album is really good but you can very much tell it was recorded in two parts 7 years apart lol

I enjoy it very much!

this was posted https://www.stereogum.com/2171393/the-wrens-next-album-wont-actually-be-released-as-a-wrens-album/news/ but also charles is in the comments

still haven't been able to bring myself to listen to the aeon station as yet

^^ the wrens performance mentioned in the comments of above article https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IVhtnCNZgAk

I never really enjoyed this band's music until earlier this year when I listened on headphones

The hard-panned dual guitar thing is really awesome

No big official announcey thing until Oct. buuuut…did return from a wonderful family vacation to find test pressings, my first in 40+ years of bands&music, in the mailbox… pic.twitter.com/CBa3jxvSX0

— the wrens (@thewrens) August 31, 2023

the charles solo album is finally complete after all this time

It's been a crazy day, so no Meadowlands-20th-Anniversary-Stuff-You-Prob.-Didn't-Know post until tomorrow, but 'good' crazy - even though album/label/new project is nearing announcement (oct. 6th), even though vinyl is at a pressing plant, etc...

— the wrens (@thewrens) September 15, 2023

proper announcement coming october 6...

he's also posting some interesting trivia about the making of the meadowlands to celebrate its 20th anniversary

meadowlands 20th-anniversary crap you didn't know #3: the twelfth-and-a-half song. Coming out of 13 Months In 6 Minutes, there's this other song that briefly pops up, settles in & immediately begins fading out. It doesn't have a name and there's obv. no start ID/track number.

— the wrens (@thewrens) September 12, 2023

meadowlands 20th-anniversary behind-the-scenes trivia story #2: The preacher dialogue that comes in at the very end of Ex-Girl Collection, is actually not a sample dropped in there as you might assume (super common in say,the '90s, less so by the time this record was finished).

— the wrens (@thewrens) September 11, 2023

additionally, an in-progress version of the unreleased 4th album from 2014 recently leaked, or something like that anyway, idk exactly what the context of it is. the files i have are labelled 'album 4.5 demo'.

lol holy shit these versions are rough sure but it is basically the album

ok sub pop/the rest of the band really should have just insisted on bringing in a producer to sift through all of this and give charles some perspective because this is brilliant even if the mixes are really rough

should have just insisted on bringing in a producer

maybe kevin shields?

i'm pretty sure bissell has already spent more time going mad over these songs than shields did with m b v

certainly looking forward to his solo album for the finished versions of most of these tracks & more but it's absolutely tragic it's never coming out in this form. the the versions of some of kevin's songs here are better than the versions on the aeon station album

but still holy shit!!! the 4th wrens album, which i thought we'd never hear, is fantastic and totally lives up to expectations even in this slightly rough form.

is this how people who liked m b v felt

Haha can you share? Soulseek producing zero results

if you search for 'wrens album 4.5 demo' you should be able to find it on soulseek

this is the tracklist:

Intro
Dog End June Twice Measured
Old Death
Leaves
In Pairs to the Palestra
Face Facts
Maille Singing Old Death The G
Crescent
As Ive Known
Haiti
Three Types of Reading Ambigui
Sophie
Gregs Ballad
And Its All Guns & Arrows
January Piano
Its The Whole Thing, Its The
December Sleep
White Fem Age 61

some of the track titles were cut off and idk what they're all supposed to be. "Its The Whole Thing, Its The" is known to be actually titled "At Irish Exit". it's "Three Types of Reading Ambiguity" obviously. "Leaves" was on the Aeon Station album almost unchanged, along with "Face Facts" (retitled "Air") and "Haiti" (retitled "Empty Rooms"). "Sophie" was re-recorded as "Queens".

OK yeah it popped up... weird that "wrens 4.5" didn't work but that did

i can't wait to hear how charles has ship-of-theseused all these songs in the decade since (if these versions really are from 2014) as well as the new songs that are going to be on it. i hope they're also all 7 minutes long and have these sort of ambitious ideas

I was one of the people that went to his house and listened to cuts in his lil studio room years back, where he personally told us that he was going to submit it to the label and it would be out within 6 months from there or whatever, then I came back here and was like “I think it’s really happening guys”... anyway these sound familiar and I wonder how different they are from the samples we heard or if they’re the same more or less, it’s hard to remember. Can’t imagine anything he’d have landed on anything relatively minimal or simplistic after all this.

Yup, it was 2017. Sigh.

there are two versions of "three types of reading ambiguity" that he previously released in 2015 and they're both relatively close to this, though one is two minutes longer and the other is a minute longer. both have a bunch of kalimba overdubs that aren't on this one at the very least. the final version is going to have kevin's bridge cut out though (it's "hold on" on the aeon station album) and i think he mentioned scrapping some of the verses at some point? he also released an instrumental of "at irish exit" in 2016 and he's clearly swapped a lot of the guitar parts there compared to this one. there were other fragments of songs that he posted on soundcloud after bits and pieces got cut from the album (a scrapped bridge from "and it's all guns & arrows" among other things) but i can't track those down now.

also worth comparing the "crescent"/"as i've known" here to the version from 2010/2011 - he's added a ton of overdubs since then, including some great new parts, but it's also so much denser

ufo thanks for all this including the insight - but I gotta know - where did the leak come from and how do you know it was the version as of 2014 specifically?

i don't have much insight at all! i saw it mentioned on hipinion (lol) and found it on soulseek but idk where it came from or whether it really is a 2014-era version of the album (that's just what someone claimed there). the tags do say 2014 and that would seem to make sense with the other versions of some of these songs we've heard but that's very hard to say with any real certainty or anything

charles posted about his mental health over the past years ahead of the big album announcement happening tomorrow/friday

https://www.wrens.com/news-etc/2023/10/5/the-mh-post

very glad to hear he's doing better these days

https://www.carcolors.net/news/happyannounceday

charles walked away from his sub pop deal to revive absolutely kosher, and is also doing nfts of alt versions of tracks because he's somehow still excited by them

... of course that's how this would end up

but at least the album is on its way at last