Pitchfork

Last week, Wind-Up Records announced that they will reissue the Wrens' first two albums, 1994's Silver and 1996's Secaucus, on November 14. (Silver is currently available on iTunes, and Secaucus will be shortly.) If the news comes as a surprise to fans, it pales in comparison to the reaction of the band members themselves.

"Our eyes shot out of our heads," singer/guitarist Charles Bissell told Pitchfork in a phone interview Friday afternoon. "We were like 'WHAT?!'"

Let's start from the beginning.

Most Wrens followers are probably familiar with the complicated backstory: Silver and Secaucus were originally released on Grass Records, which would eventually become Wind-Up under the leadership of Alan Meltzer. As the band reached the end of their contract with Grass, Meltzer sought to polish the Wrens' sound into something more radio-friendly. The band refused, and did not renew their contract with the label.

The Wrens went on to release the Abbott 1135 EP on the Ten 23 label in 1997, and their triumphant third album, The Meadowlands, on Absolutely Kosher in 2003. Grass morphed into Wind-Up, signed Creed and Evanescence, and basically took over the world. For years, the Wrens have wrangled with Wind-Up for the rights to Silver and Secaucus; most recently, in the summer of 2005, Absolutely Kosher offered $100,000 to purchase the albums. Their offer was declined. Meanwhile, the records continued to run up expensive price tags on eBay. So a year later, in the summer of 2006, when the Wrens' publisher Rough Trade told the band about Wind-Up's plans to finally reissue the albums, the band was understandably floored. "We only found out about it through our publisher who was contacting them to get other information," Bissell explained. "[Wind-Up] were like, 'Oh it's funny that you mention this because we're going to be re-releasing the records.'"

Why now? Bissell thinks the $100,000 offer might have had something to do with it. "If you have some crap in your kitchen drawer and someone's like, 'Oh, you know what, I'll give you a hundred thousand dollars for that old pen,' suddenly, you might be like, 'maybe we'll take care of this.'"

Meltzer told Billboard.com last week that the reissues were brought about, "Because the music is too important to keep in some vault. We have been on such a huge growth curve as a company, we felt we were never able to do justice to the material in terms of the necessary marketing, promotion and in-store placement."

Although the label has not started promoting the reissues yet, and no sign of their existence is evident on the Wind-Up website, the label claims that will be remedied soon.

Once the initial shock of the news of the reissues wore off, the Wrens settled into a mix of gratitude and wariness. "If someone's putting out your records from ten years ago, regardless of the circumstances or weird stuff that's going on, in a way that's what counts," Bissell said. "There's so much weirdness and bad blood over a period of time that you end up having very complicated, mixed feelings. But ultimately that is what matters."

Billboard.com quoted Wrens drummer Jerry MacDonnell as saying, "If Alan Meltzer is reading this, maybe he wants to go grab a movie and bury the axe."

Bissell told Pitchfork that he agrees. "Yes, that's true. In a day-to-day sense, we never think about this stuff. It's not really relevant to us. We don't get up in the morning and think about Alan Meltzer. It's like complaining about some bad breakup from 10 or 11 years ago."

However, the matter of who, exactly, will be profiting from the sales of these reissues is still a sore subject. Because the Wrens still legally owe Wind-Up a large recoupable balance for the promotion of Silver and Secaucus, Bissell said that the Wrens are unlikely to see any money from the reissues, unless "they negotiate or sort out or change what the recoupable balance is, or unless they sell a whole lot of copies."

Regardless, Absolutely Kosher has already begun selling pre-orders of the reissues from its website, both individually and bundled together, and in a "Lord of the Wrens" package along with The Meadowlands.

At one point, out of frustration, the Wrens planned on re-recording parts or all of Silver and Secaucus, but those plans have been put on hold due to the reissues. Although MacDonnell told Billboard.com that the Wrens are "25%" finished with a new album that they hope to release next fall, Bissell claimed that isn't true in the least. "I think that's just something to say in an interview. We haven't started anything. There's no songs. We haven't gotten together once. It's all a lie. We haven't started a single bit. It was hilarious. When we saw that part [of the article], we were literally just laughing out loud."

However, that doesn't mean the Wrens aren't keeping busy with plenty of other projects. They plan on putting out a re-jiggered version of the Abbott 1135 EP, "redoing parts of it, remixing it," according to Bissell. "We'll rerecord some guitars, some chorus. A verse will change here, a chorus will change there. And record the bass and guitars accordingly."

Jagjaguwar will release a split single between Bissell and Will Sheff of Okkervil River, with each covering one of the other's songs. Bissell does "It Ends With a Fall" and Sheff tackles "Ex-Girl Collection"

A split 7" with Western Keys for the Post-Parlo label's Home series (yes, it still exists!) is planned, as are 7"s for the German label Fidel Bastro and the Olympia, Washington label People in a Position to Know (the latter will be another split).

The Wrens are also working on music for the film Losing Ground, a documentary by Michael Levine about New Jersey suburban sprawl, and a possible remix of a song by a band whose "name starts with an 'X'," according to the Wrens' website. Gee, who could that be?

In other Wrens news, The Meadowlands was recently released in Australia and New Zealand on Etch n Sketch Records, and the band plans to begin streaming their entire back catalog via their MySpace page soon.

Starting this Friday, the Wrens have a bunch of shows lined up throughout the fall and winter. According to Bissell, expect to hear reworked versions of old favorites the band hasn't played live for years. And the band recently put out a call on its website for "the 5th Wren": "There are a bunch of songs we either don't do or don't do all that well only 'cause there are simply too many parts on the record and we can't figure a way around not playing the parts live and can't cover it with the four of us. The solution? The 5th Wren.

"Essentially, we're gonna write out the tab/standard notation for the extra parts for a handful of songs-- could be a guitar part, could be a baritone, could be a piano-- and post them on the site. Anyone who cares to will be invited to learn the part, there'll be an email sign-up form to reserve that part for that particular song when we're playing at a venue near you, and then come on up and kick out the funk, motherjammers. Should be fun. Will start this week in time for the Ohio-area shows and then should be adding another song/part every week or so."

Wrens dates:

10-13 Columbus, OH - Little Brother's *
10-14 Newport, KY - Southgate House *#
10-24 New York, NY - The Kitchen (Charles Bissell and Kevin Whelan duo)
10-27 Philadelphia, PA - First Unitarian Church ^
10-28 Washington, DC - Black Cat ^
11-10 Los Angeles, CA - Troubadour %
11-11 San Francisco, CA - Be the Riottt! festival
11-17 New York, NY - Mercury Lounge (Charles Bissell solo) &
11-18 New York, NY - Mercury Lounge (Charles Bissell solo) &
12-02 Barcelona, Spain - Primavera festival

* with Swearing at Motorists
# with Ruby Vileos
^ with +/-, Palomar
% with Asobi Seksu, the Bon Savants
& with Centro-matic, Bobby Bare Jr., David Vandervelde