Exhausted:
“Because every win
on this record’s
hard-won.”

Being a love letter to The Wrens and their 2003 album, The Meadowlands. Composed of an improbable combination of gushing prose, digital audio recordings, live and promotional music videos, a handful of amusing quotations, an anecdote involving the rock band, “Creed,” one grudging acknowledgment of a web property that rhymes with, “witch dork,” plus a sampling of band photographs, curated from the modest portfolio of your author. Who is a fan.

The Wrens - “This Boy is Exhausted” (Demo, 1999)

Might want to go ahead and brace yourself, because I can feel my periodic “Wrens Thing” coming on. Sorry in advance. Wait. Actually, no. I’m not sorry.

Because, these guys? These guys are the real deal. And you don’t apologize for the real deal. The real deal have earned it, my friend, and their story must be told…

The Wrens get a call in 1989 off their first demo asking if they want to open for comeback band - The Fixx. The catch is that they must sell 1000 tickets. The Wrens fail to sell even 6 tickets and sadly, the Fixx cancel. The ‘80s draw to a close.
—bio

So, yeah, I’ll just stipulate that I love these men to death—as musicians and as pals and as candidates for that pantheon of desultory indie rock anti-heroes on whom we hang our disappointments as often as our aspirations.

Because, the implicit story of The Meadowlands — while at points fictionalized or roman-à-clef’d — is very much the story of The Wrens. So much.

The Wrens get a gig as the house band on the on Cape May/Delaware Ferry. The Wrens later get fired after performing the Pixies’ “debaser” to the mostly senior citizen crowd.
—bio

That fictional fuzziness is seldom more poignant than on the weirdly moving “This Boy is Exhausted,” in which Charles Bissell affectionately namechecks his bandmates and extolls the creaky exhilaration peculiar to middle-aged men lumbering on-stage to rock out with their friends. And, how it just doesn’t happen nearly as often as anyone would like. (Including, of course, their fans)

The Wrens - “This Boy is Exhausted” (The Meadowlands, Album Version, 2003)

but then once a while
we’ll play a show then that makes it worthwhile
our sights set low
as jerry squares off the set - here we go…
#

It’s such a wonderful lyric, and to me it becomes way more moving when you know the story behind the story — how the band’s twisted path to almost-kinda-sorta-success got folded, spindled, and mutilated by pretty much everybody they encountered, from themselves through Creed. Yes, that Creed:

The head of [Grass Records], infuriated, commences layoffs of involved record company personnel and vows that “the next band to walk through that door will be made famous - at any cost”. The next band through the door is Creed. Grass Records becomes Wind Up Records. Creed becomes famous at any cost.
—bio

So, as Creed shiny-pantsed their way through the Lord’s work, and as The Wrens’ once-promising future as a real professional band yellowed and stank as badly as Scott Stapp’s last wife-beater, you can guess where Our Heroes ended up. At least from a professional standpoint.

The Wrens - “Hopeless” (The Meadowlands, 2003)

lyric:

hopeless
that this will turn out better
this isn’t want I wanted
I should have listened to them
go thank yourself for nothing
its really all you’re good for
every year you wasted
and every half ass offer
#

a lovely live video:

Kevin. What can you say about Kevin? Only everything.

So, I think that demo version of “This Boy is Exhausted” is from 1999 — a couple years after the (wildly-underheard) Abbott 1135 e.p., but several years before the 2003 release of The Meadowlands that would end up emotionally tasering everyone I know. Yeah, especially the middle-aged guys.

But, even on an album of equals, a couple tracks really do hit you a little harder in a very tender part of the gut.

The Wrens - “She Sends Kisses” (The Meadowlands, 2003)

lyric:

past clumsy crushes beneath Thrill Pier
hopes pinned to poses honed in men’s room mirrors
a sophomore at Brown
she worked Lost & Found
I put your face on her all year
#

fan video:

It really is a stunning album.

“The Meadowlands exemplifies what every fan hopes for when a band announces a reunion or returns from more than a half-decade of silence: that they might have somehow improved exponentially each year they hid from the limelight, resulting in a payoff so cultivated it could be called their defining achievement by consensus.”
—pf

Anyway, I love a lot of bands and a lot of records, but I’d be hard-pressed to pick an album from the past decade that got a sharper hook any deeper into my heart.

Like the men who burnt and built countless wooden bridges to complete it, The Meadowlands is by turns, intensely personal, willfully oblique, painstakingly noisy, unapologetically sentimental, unintentionally awkward, 12-pack-of-Natural-Light-ingly confessional, hilariously arrogant, and, at times, just unbelievably eclectic and ambitious in its scope.

But it works.

The Wrens - “Ex-Girl Collection” (The Meadowlands, 2003)

lyric:

ann slams in
another lightening round begins
this could get interesting
where’s ann been?
she pours herself a don’t-ask gin
no ice and light on the bitters
I’m done with quitters
#

It so fucking works.

July 2002: The Wrens throw drunken hoe-down to celebrate final completion of the Meadowlands. Party highlights include erasure of all Meadowlands multi-track master tapes.
—bio

It’s my one record — maybe even more than Abbey Road or Zen Arcade — that I listen to front to back at a sitting. Sometimes multiple times.

Because behind the songs, it’s really a slender book of short stories—written by different writers, but all about the same fucked-up shithole of a town. In which a handful of broken people drift through bad jobs and worse relationships, shielding old bruises and avoiding eye contact while privately nursing the last couple ambitions nobody’s figured out how to beat finally out of them.

The Wrens - “Everyone Choose Sides” (The Meadowlands, 2003)

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lyric:

…13 grand
a year in the meadowlands
bored and rural-poor, lord, at 35, right?
I’m the best 17 year old ever
#

“Everyone Choose Sides” video (via recently here):

Go. Get. Love.

This is not an affiliate link—this is a pure love link: Buy/Download The Meadowlands from The Wrens’ store.

Also, you can have your personal copy of The Meadowlands on your digtial listening device in seconds, thanks to the good people at Amazon and iTunes.

Seek this band out, my friends. Welcome them into your black and cynical heart. Let them help remind you how much you used to care about rock and roll.