ANDREW: I was walking somewhere a couple weeks back, and shuffle played me a track I hadn't heard in years. It was in the salad days of my music fandom in 2003, when I had only just discovered the thrill of digging through stacks of used CDs at Bull Moose Records when The Wrens released their third album Meadowlands. I was previously unaware of their 90s indie-cred, and their first two albums, but figured it was worth a spin. The Wrens delivered a crisp slice of indie melancholy, that sounded just right to my angsty ears. Somehow this record managed to avoid the sarcasm of previous era contemporaries like Stephen Malkmus, and the awful saccharine stylings of early 2000s dudes like Ben Gibbard. Meadowlands felt to me then as it does now to be a tremendously earnest and well-balanced record, and when I heard it for the first time in years it was refreshing. Not beholden to any microgenres or subtrends, not leaked on a blog or analyzed on Twitter, but chock-full of really solid songwritin' and guitarin' and such. Great for a fall day. Next year The Wrens are supposed to release a follow up to Meadowlands, putting them firmly on that one album every seven to eight years plan. I can only hope when I fire that album up on my subcutaneous iPod- augmented reality viewer in 2020 that it sounds just as refreshing.
The Wrens - "She Sends Kisses"
The Wrens - "This Boy Is Exhausted"
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