The Wrens: The Meadowlands

I ordered this album through the mail directly from Absolutely Kosher. And, yes, I’m old. But it came with this cool silkscreened CD sleeve. I still have it the house somewhere. So it probably wasn’t until years later when I saw the original cover with this shack thing on it. What the fuck is that? This album is called The Meadowlands. Giants stadium. Tailgating in modern swamps. Harness racing. What’s up with the Southern Gothic shed? What are these spazzy young men up to? Turns out they were busy becoming— as some would call them — the “American Radiohead“. A fake, rock-critic-inspired title either stolen from or shared with Grandaddy, I suppose. But this, The Meadowlands, was a wholly different thing than their debut, Secaucus. Another record named after an area not too far from these parts in NJ.

The thing is, I admittedly didn’t understand this album when I first listened to it. It was 2003 and my brain hadn’t fully formed. Despite me being a whole-ass, married adult. More so, my musical brain hadn’t fully formed. Even though I worked at a giant record label and was constantly surrounded by music. Sure, I listened to indie rock and some more things that qualified as “sophisticated” for the time, but The Meadowlands was something different. It wasn’t straight ahead. It wasn’t melodic in the traditional sense. The production could be jarring and challenging in spots. The songs long and meandering. It didn’t feel as esoteric and overly cerebral as Kid A — an album that honestly left me cold — but it honestly overwhelmed me and left me adrift. It sounded… weird. But intentionally so. Because, once again, I didn’t truly know how to listen. How to truly listen.

Instead, I put it in the CD player, cranked it and proceeded to lose focus. The lyrics felt buried in layers of noise. The instrumentation too varied and sonically blown-out to get ahold of. I probably made a face or two when they purposely pegged the needles and distorted everything across the board. It felt as though my stereo — despite having some pretty killer floor speakers — just couldn’t contain what they were putting out. And I tried. Because this was supposed to be cool. And I tried some more. But I just couldn’t make it one of my favorites. I just couldn’t. Sorry, Wrens. Sorry, rock critics. I’m a bad indie rock guy. After all, I had that new Postal Service album to get me through the night. Those guys are going to go on to a huuuge career together, I have no doubt.

Enter the new era of streaming. And, yes, I have/had some nice wired headphones and could have listened to this CD in them. But now, with lossless and really good over-ear wireless headphones, this record has new life. Because it is an album that sounds really cool in the intimate environment of close-up headspace. The oddball production choices make more sense. What was once off-putting, now feel like really cool choices. What I once heard as kind of janky I now hear as Beatlesque. Or The Beach Boys for a new generation. The Replacements with a higher IQ. Sure, it’s mostly latter day Gen X misery lyrics-wise, but you try taking four years to record an album and see what kind of mood you’re in! Of course, as of 2025 we’re still waiting for that promised follow-up. I used to be on a mailing list — and I think there was some Blogger site or something — where they would post updates on progress on the next record, promising once every few years that its release was imminent. But it never happened — and seemingly never will. So we’re left with The Meadowlands as their swan song. And what a song it is. It just took me a decade or two to figure it out.