The Wrens’ Charles Bissell Says He’s Working On A New Album For Sub Pop

Last year, the Wrens broke up messily. The band had been working for nearly 20 years on their follow-up to the beloved 2003 album The Meadowlands, and co-leader Kevin Whelan got sick of the process. He took many of the Wrens songs that he’d written and released them under the name Aeon Station. Earlier this year, Bissell played what was billed as the final performance of “the Wrens years.” Today, he’s written a long update on his new album, which he says is coming out soon on Sub Pop, the same label that released the Aeon Station album.

Charles Bissell has been talking about his next album for a long time. Today, in a statement on the Wrens’ website, Bissell talks a bit about “what may be the dumbest public-y culmination of a protracted three-year band implosion ever” and about how hard it’s been to work on new music. But Bissell says that he’s now “newly excited” about music and that updates on his next album are coming. For now Bissell offers this:

I was also waiting to hear back on a couple of record-release things from Sub Pop, which I happily did Saturday, and so I’m now, again sorta newly, not just super re-psyched about music in general but about this album & the release-plans themselves (and a quick hat tip to the folks there who have been years-patient and ultimately & very understanding in all of this.

I’ll be able to shout more about the particulars after the new year. So yeah, while it’s still my songs from the same long-pending wrens album etc. etc., that’s particulars like, oh…a new project name, new social media acct’s/website/etc., album name, some really exciting (ok, possibly to me only) release plans, oh yeah..A RELEASE DATE (not a typo, thank you) etc., that sorta thing, which I’ve been looking forward to & working towards for..heck, decades.

You can read Bissell’s whole update here.