The tagline on The Wrens' website reads "keeping people waiting since 1989." That's a tongue-in-cheek allusion to the fact that the group tends to prolong things between albums. They spent seven years between 1996's Secaucus and 2003's indie darling The Meadowlands. But that gap pales in comparison to the current one, which will reach 12 years in 2015. Good news, though: Frontman Charles Bisell says the new record is finally finished.
"It is what it is," he wrote on the website (via CoS). "And it'll be fine. And that's ME saying that. A few nuts & bolts have to be put back together when I get back home so we can ship all the rest off to mastering. But the [sic] it's done and if the Hold Steady hadn't beaten us to it, would probably now call it The Wrens Almost Killed Me."
Humor aside, Bisell also detailed a near-death experience after a severe case of sepsis hospitalized him earlier this year. Apparently, the ordeal proved to be enough impetus for Bisell and the other members — Greg Whelan, Kevin Whelan and Jerry MacDonald — to just finish the damn album.
"So our 25th year as a band was not a red-letter one for us personally," Bisell wrote. "There was cancer, family woes, children's issues (aren't there always?), capping off with this near-death pneumonia. Some of that was directly attributable to the dumb ceaseless toil it takes, or at least takes me, to make a record. And while difficulty finishing one's indie rock album falls on the list of First World problems only a few slots below "damn it, the yield on my fund dropped for the second quarter!", [sic] the other more life & death stuff is obviously just common to the world. Which is to say our year was probably not much different than many of yours."
To get in the mood for more Wrens, relive their greatest moment, 2003's "She Sends Kisses."
