“We were in Europe one summer, doing the festival circuit with all these other bands, and we’d be flying back every week. So the Wrens opted to squeeze their touring into weekends and vacation days. Greg Whelan had already restarted his career at the bottom once before now with a good job at Pfizer, he couldn’t do it again. MacDonald, the drummer, had moved to the Philadelphia area and had two kids, on his way to four. The Wrens’ immediate problem after “The Meadowlands,” he explained, was that they couldn’t go all in. “One of them stood in my office and said, ‘I know who you are.’ And I said ‘That’s incorrect!’”ĭescribing how these last 18 years have slipped by, Whelan never lost his natural cheerfulness. “Only a couple of guys at work know,” he said, as we sat outside a coffee shop in Jersey City. Now he manages 400 people at Johnson & Johnson and passes himself off as a suburban dad. IN THE EARLY days of the Wrens, Kevin Whelan had a pompadour and wore his rock aspirations like a crown.
Something about them is just out of reach and I find that totally intoxicating.” To their generation of reluctant grown-ups, the Wrens delivered a stirring message: No matter how old and tired and weighed down with life you feel, keep going, because you never know - your best work may yet lie ahead. I understand their songs, but also don’t. Matthew Caws of the band Nada Surf, which had its own midcareer renaissance around the same time, described his reaction to the album as “instant adoration, all magic. When “The Meadowlands” came out in 2003 following a seven-year pause, it was lavished with praise from critics and peers. Bissell is cerebral and ruthlessly meticulous, skilled at melding disparate elements - catchy melodies, jagged guitars, complex lyrics, multiple modulations and tempo changes - into infectious rock songs that disguise his torturous process. He also happens to be a classically trained pianist. Whelan is intuitive and freewheeling, a dynamic singer and rousing performer who pours himself into his music.