The Wrens

The Wrens play a kind of alternately brooding and swooning rock, which epitomizes all that was ever meant by the tag “indie rock” in the late ’90s and thereafter. The New Jersey group hit a career apex with 2003’s The Meadowlands, a sleeper classic that set the stakes improbably high for a follow-up. With only three albums released since forming in 1989, The Wrens have never exactly been prolific, but they never waned in popularity, either—Wind-Up Records even reissued 1994’s Silver and 1996’s Secaucus in 2006 due to popular demand. A few intermittent covers and singles—including “They’ll Need A Crane” for the 2006 They Might Be Giants tribute album Hello Radio—in the past few years have kept fans quelled, but the promised follow-up to The Meadowlands is way overdue.