Daily Jam - Ex-Girl Collection

Here's a track from one of my favorite albums of all time, "The Meadowland," by the gone but not forgotten Jersey band The Wrens.  Listen to "Ex-Girl Collection" below, our Daily Jam.

Daily Jam - Nightswimming

It's my wife's birthday today, and she wants to do things like go to a brewery, play video games with our boys, watch college football bowl games, and then go to a hot pot restaurant for dinner.  She rules.  So here's a cover of R.E.M.'s "Nightswimming" by one of my perennial favorites The Wrens, from a Stereogum compilation celebrating the 15th anniversary of "Drive."  That compilation is now 15 years old itself.  Man, we are getting old.  Anyway, listen to the track below, our Daily Jam...and happy birthday Paige.

Daily Jam - Everyone Choose Sides

Here's one of my favorite songs from one of my favorite albums.  Listen to The Wrens and "Everyone Choose Sides" below, our Daily Jam.

Aeon Station

One of my favorite albums of all time is 2003's "The Meadowlands" from New Jersey band The Wrens.  For 18 years, we've all been waiting patiently for the follow up that just never gets released.  Now, it seem that that record may be their swan song as inner turmoil within the band has led member Kevin Whelan to take songs he had written for the constantly delayed 4th album and strike out on his own as Aeon Station.  And going by the recently released "Queens," these are going to be great songs.  It's sad to see what seems to be the dissolving of The Wrens, but i'm looking forward to hearing some of the music that's been gestating for the last two decades.  Check the track out below and pre-order the upcoming "Observatory" LP here from Sub Pop.

Daily Jam - Safe and Comfortable

Still waiting on that new album from The Wrens.  It's been 18 years now.  Who do they think they are, My Bloody Valentine or something?  Anyway, here's a cut from 1996's "Secaucus."  Listen to "Safe and Comfortable" below, our Daily Jam.

Daily Jam - Hopeless

It's been 17 years since The Wrens released "The Meadowlands."  They've been teasing the follow up ever since.  Someday.  Maybe someday.  But even if they never record or release another note, "The Meadowlands" still stands as one of the greatest break-up albums ever made, in my opinion rivaled only by Spiritualized's "Ladies and Gentlemen We Are Floating in Space."  Here's "Hopeless," our Daily Jam.

The Wrens - At Irish Exit (demo)

It's been over 13 years since "The Meadowlands" came out, the magnum opus from indie rock band The Wrens and one of my favorite albums from this century.  There's a whole myriad of reasons why the follow up has taken so long to come out, but lead man Charles Bissell just put out an instrumental demo version of a new track called "At Irish Exit."  He had this to say about it:

"Sooo…quite a poop week (after quite an ‘interesting’ year or so), a week in which I found myself thinking that many things don’t matter or not in the way I thought, or that they used to, or at least music, or at least being overly precious & perfectionist about music (maybe that’s it, actually).

Which led me in some post-election despair-y fog to say, “what the heck, I’ll post a song” but really, that’s not fair to the label folks who have very, VERY cool & patiently waited for me to eternally wrap my shit up.

So with an eye towards the ideal politics of the hopefully-not-distant future (i.e. as a compromise), this is an instrumental version of the song I happen to be working on right now, it’s the last one still under construction and yes, that means the album is only finishing now.

There a bunch of reasons for that (the work itself, health, working at night like lots of folks, that sort of thing) but I just can’t bear to hear myself go into them all, esp. this week. I’ll post something about all that later.

Meanwhile, the finish line lies right beyond this: I’ll check the vocal version tomorrow and then create a new version w/ parallel limiting/compression to make the parts sorta squeeze out around the vocal; then it goes off to mastering as well (this is the fourth official round of mastering, all due my shortcomings, not the mastering engineer who is a sonic guru).

The upshot, if there is one, of an instrumental v., is it’ll let you hear all the parts that I’m sure, w/ my limited engineering skill-set, will be completely obliterated by the lead vocal. I hate vocals (esp. my own). They ruin everything."

Listen to the track below.  Hopefully we'll have a new record sometime next year (i say that every year).