It’s mid-June. Some
people don’t even realise that one-sixth of the summer is gone, so there you
go.
It’s June. The
rumours of a Meadowlands follow-up
are in the air (where would we all be without the rumours of a Meadowlands follow-up?), so it’s time
for my annual Wrens-related post.
Evelyn Waugh, a
classic English writer I admire but not love, has a rather interesting essay
about style in which he praises the writing technique of Ernest Hemingway but
also mentions its one vital downside. It spawned so many bad parodies, it
produced such a number of worthless imitators and hapless writers that you
might start questioning the original source. Simplicity is too easy to
simplify, and nobody cares to notice the subtlety of Hemingway’s writing.
I fully realise how
far-fetched my analogy might seem, but that is how I feel about The Wrens’
album from 2003. The album itself is brilliant, I see no reason why anyone would
want to put it down (unless you get caught up in a silly anti-hype game), but
other than these 13 lush, intense, heart-bursting songs – it has not done much
good for the world. Hordes of hapless indie bands and worthless emo fakers
fucked it all up and released so much musical twaddle that you might want to
listen to a song like the one linked below and wonder how it could all go so horribly,
horribly wrong:
