The Wrens

The first time I saw the Wrens I was a junior at Ohio University. It was an outdoor show put on by the university and they were headlining. I’d seen the name on a trifold in the cafeteria (why was I in the cafeteria as a junior?) and made a mental note to hit the show. It was a polite experience. The twenty or so people arranged in safe distances from the stage waited patiently for the band to play “She Sends Kisses,” then left. Presumably, keg stands awaited. But four years later, something has changed. I have found myself in the past week in the process of wrangling a spot to one of two sold-out shows in Chicago, a triumphant and trumpeted weekend stand at the venerable venue Schubas in celebration of the band’s twentieth anniversary. I hadn’t even known that I desperately wanted to be at this show. Friends yearned to scalp but deemed the conquest moot; Facebook statuses ululated the dearth of tickets.

To my surprise, this was a big Friday. I find myself now wondering what changed in everybody else but realizing the same thing changed in myself. I am no omniscient third, after all: I too stood around nonplussed at OU years ago, I too wrangled desperately for a Friday night ticket this time. And it occurs to me that the difference between these two concerts is merely their difference, the four years stretched between them. The Wrens are the exact same band playing the exact same songs; all that has changed is the date on the calendar. This implies a direct correlation between the Wrens’ artistic relevance and the amount of time people have had to listen to their records. Every year, in every way, the Wrens are sounding better, to me and, apparently, everyone else.

This is strange for a ton of reasons, perhaps the most pressing of which is that the emotions their music expresses—namely, romantic longing and feverish melancholy—are ones I find increasingly mawkish in music. To the point that now I reject such stuff on principle, as if longing and melancholy didn’t exist or had been expressed to completion already. I’d rather hear Noah 23 spit rapid-fire sci-fi existentialism than some hand-wringing turtledick moan about some chick not liking him anymore; this is just, sorta, how I’ve progressed as a person. Age has made me a callous man, lowbrow, nonemotive. And I was among the youngest at this Wrens show. I was still at least drinking PBR, but everybody else was drinking fucking Stella. I think these people were in their thirties! What were they doing screaming lyrics at an emo show? What was I doing?

There is, unfortunately, no flashy explanation for this band’s resilience. It’s the same thing everybody said in 2003 when The Meadowlands dropped—although in hindsight it feels more like it was uncovered, having existed fully formed since the dawn of time—and that’s that while the Wrens are just four dudes playing songs about grey areas of relationships, those songs are pretty much perfect. Shifts to minor chords reflect melancholy turns of phrase, and climaxes aren’t merely louder versions of earlier parts but finely wrought into the structure of the song, built with an inevitability that feels almost architectural. It’s for this reason that over these past years I’ve found, often within the same song, kernels of sentiments too sad for words and also pulsing beacons of optimism: romance, naked and under fluorescents.

I am speaking in this metaphor almost exclusively about the song “Happy,” but that’s because I’m the one speaking. Everyone had their own little cathartic moment, their own point of actualization, at this show; the tumbling progression of audience requests implied as much. The band gamely dodged these volleys, playing with a looseness befitting the occasion, and a quick rapport was established between performer and attendee that went beyond the band’s occasional invited audience participation. Wrens fans really fucking love the Wrens. I’ve seen shows that have sent the audience staggering into the street babbling like apostles— Fucked Up did it last week—but Wrens fans came expecting such an experience and nothing less, tear ducts welling up at the thought of “Ex-Girl Collection.” Earnest openers the Biltmores couldn’t have asked for a more receptive crowd.

So, obviously: were there any hints toward a new Wrens record? Onstage, they laughed at the suggestion, and though they debuted some new material much of it felt sketch-like, hinting at something grand like a skyscraper in mid-construction. In short: no time soon, world—but here is a band for which our patience is rewarded in flourishing exponentials. Give them time, and they’ll give it back.