The Wrens — Secaucus
The sun’s setting in Dubai. I love this gradient of sky: pale orange to pale blue. I love to see the sky fade to purple. The last few days have been replete with professional decisions I’ve had to make; I haven’t made them yet. Odds are you don’t me, that’s a measure of the limited success Stranger Fiction has achieved in the past 6 months. Know that it encourages me to keep going, to keep growing. I mean that both from a personal point of view and from the point of view of the guy that runs Stranger Fiction. Odds are you don’t know the exact ins and outs of my professional dilemmas. Know that they’re likely to be relatable, given that, statistically speaking, you, like me, are likely to be a privileged member of 2021’s white collar class. Which opportunity should I chase? Which one is closest to my interests? Am I ok relocating in what is somehow still the middle of a pandemic? How much money should I be making in a year? How much should I be investing?
Meanwhile, I’m discovering an old band that’s new to me. In the last six months of writing here, almost every album I’ve featured has been either a new record or an old album to which I’ve returned. The most notable exception to this rule is my series on jazz, where I’ve discovered old records that are entirely new to me. But for the most part, I’m either talking about old favourites or entirely new discoveries. For example, the album I wrote about yesterday, 12 Rods’ Split Personalities, is one I’ve spun repeatedly, especially through a trying personal time five years ago. It’s one of the most beautiful things about music: that it can take you back to a place and time when you were some younger version of yourself going through something that at the time seemed insurmountable, but now seems manageable. When looking back at this lockdown, I’m sure I’ll think of Ichiko Aoba, Kelly Lee Owens, etc. But as someone whose music vocabulary was built on nineties and oughties alternative rock and punk-infused independent music, I’ve been missing the sound of albums like Split Personalities. So after writing about the album, I went on a journey to discover an artist from that era whose work I hadn’t previously heard.
The Wrens were Spotify’s first entry on the list of bands that those who liked 12 Rods also liked. As a firm disbeliever in the ability of algorithms to accurately predict taste, I usually ignore Spotify’s opinion on what music I might also like. Would an algorithm be able to accurately predict my favourite album of the year was Ichiko Aoba’s Windwept Adan based on all the writing about distorted guitars I’ve been doing? Maybe; or maybe it’s just my stubborn monkey-brain-manifested-as-ego that thinks of itself as unpredictable. But I’ve seen far too many failed attempts at algorithmising music prediction to think that there’s more to it than that. But anyway, after exhausting the too-short 12 Rods discography, I decided to listen to Spotify and check out the Wrens, and really enjoyed each of their albums.
There’s really something wonderful about discovering new music. I’m glad I live a life that allows repeated a-ha moments that come along with it. To me it’s almost a spiritual experience. I alluded to this in my last post as well. My mind shuts off all its anxieties and worries, and for the duration of the song or album, just stays in the zone. That’s what happened with me and the discography of the Wrens, particularly Secaucus, their second album. I know there I haven’t spoken about the music in this piece, but that’s by design. I just want to listen to Secaucus again; think of this piece as more a confessional work than a review.
