“Old Death” is the first new music in 20 years from Charles Bissell, singer-writer-producer of the Wrens. The single was released as a limited 12″ via the rebirth of the label Absolutely Kosher with the promise of a full length in 2024. You can order the limited vinyl HERE.
About The Song from Charles Bissell:
“First, I’m joined here by Jeff Lipstein (original wrens drummer(!), Mercury Rev, Sandy Bell etc.), who played & recorded the drums on this song and others – fantastically.
“Old Death” is, like the rest of the album (coming 2024), sort of a sequel to the meadowlands and like that one, is about time, how one chooses to spend it, what those choices cost. That means for me, the song (and album) is also about making the album itself. It’s about death, maybe obviously, but it’s really about my dumb life. And because so much of that life, over the last decade especially, lined up weirdly well to the Odyssey, it’s all sorta hung on Homer’s narrative framework (unlike say, Ulysses, in my case it’s all very non-fictional/auto-biographical).
However like Ulysses, every song is written in a stream-of-consciousness mode. Or for me, really more of a stream-of-memories: that time this happened, that other-time-this-reminds-me-of happened etc. Hence, the parenthetical dating throughout the lyrics as those memories pop in&out. So basically like, unlike, like and then unlike Ulysses – ha.”
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