
Car Colors is the new solo project of Charles Bissell, longtime Wrens co-frontman and studio tinkerer extraordinaire. A month ago, Bissell announced that Absolutely Kosher — the long-defunct record label that released the Wrens’ masterpiece The Meadowlands 20 years ago — was coming back to release Bissell’s Car Colors album. He also revealed that “Old Death,” the first Car Colors single, would be out today. And it is! Holy shit, it actually is!
The Car Colors album contains material that would have been on the next Wrens record if co-frontman Kevin Whelan hadn’t grown impatient with Bissell’s endless postponements and funneled his own songs into new band Aeon Station. And “Old Death” — friends, it sounds like a motherfucking Wrens song. Seven minutes long and buoyed by triumphal brass, it strikes me as a brilliant update on that ambitious, expansive, world-shattering, life-affirming Meadowlands sound. I’ve been waiting two decades for this moment. I can’t believe it’s really here and really this good.
Listen below.
Info on the Car Colors album is supposedly coming soon. Get stoked!