The Wrens’ Charles Bissell confirms new album to be released via Sub Pop

The Wrens co-leader Charles Bissell has confirmed that he has a new album coming out via Sub Pop, with further details to be announced in January.

Bissell previously teased that a new Wrens record was on the way, which will be the long-awaited follow-up to the band’s 2003 cult classic ‘The Meadowlands’. In 2021, however, Kevin Whelan announced that he was leaving the Wrens to release his debut album as Aeon Station following a band fallout.

Songs from the proposed new Wrens album would appear on Whelan’s ‘Observatory’, according to a feature in the New York Times. While Bissell doesn’t appear on the new record, there are contributions from Wrens members Jerry MacDonald and Greg Whelan.

Following Whelan’s departure, Bissell told Stereogum that his own songs will also be released under a different project name, confirming the tracks “have also been done for a couple years & will come out now… as a solo album, I guess.”

Now, the musician has shared a lengthy blog post and confirmed news of a new album on Twitter. “I’d tweeted about the ‘good story I have for you later’ which has continued to unfold up through even the last few weeks, even days,” he wrote. “I know that’s dumbly cryptic but I just can’t get specific @ the moment &, the more time that goes by, I ultimately may not even.”

I'd tweeted about the ‘good story I have for you later’ which has continued to unfold up through even the last few weeks, even days. I know that’s dumbly cryptic but I just can’t get specific @ the moment &, the more time that goes by, I ultimately may not https://t.co/zBe21E4kQI

— the wrens (@thewrens) December 19, 2022

Bissell explained in the blog post that he had “sorta stopped working on” the record by last winter but recently returned to it after a series of personal shifts.

“I’ve found myself starting to thaw out of that,” he said, “out of the music/band depression I guess, and to think that maybe I AM gonna/will be/should be working on music one way or another after all.”

He continued: “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.”

Bissell added that he’s “newly excited about music in general, about making music, and about releasing this music in particular, again, for the first time in a looooong time.”

Speaking in an interview in 2021, Bissell and Whelan opened up individually about The Wrens’ breakup and their personal fallout.

Speaking on the length of time it took to record the follow-up to ‘The Meadowlands’ and the February 2021 deadline he gave Bissell to finish it, Whelan said: “Ultimatum is sometimes seen as a bad word, but if you waited from 2007 until 2021, I think you were pretty generous.”

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