The Meadowlands is a concept album about the hell of middle age. The album opens with the lyrics "It's been so long since you heard from me / Got a wife and kid that I never see / And I'm nowhere near where I dreamed I'd be / Can't believe what life's done to me" and the album just gets more optimistic from there. The Wrens employ a super-duper emotional style, with the most searing vocals this side of
Zen Arcade-era Husker Du and songs that more often than not evolve into great washes of searing noise. The band name, album title and first single "She Sends Kisses" suggest a quiet indie record, but that couldn't be further from the truth: this is aggressive rock music, "Happy" in particular--one of the great breakup songs, the lyrics barely literate screams of rage and disappointment. This is not a happy record, and it's appropriate that the album ends with a scream that sounds like it's shredding the recording equipment. The downside to this record is that it's a little too long (nearly an hour) and the stuff in the second half just doesn't reach the incredible emotional power of that in the first half--the lyrics are a little more oblique, the melodies less immediate. It says something that for the first 5 or so tracks I was convinced that this was a near-perfect album, a 9.5 or greater; but it isn't, it's mortal, and the second half drags the whole thing down significantly. But the first half is still as powerful and as violent as it ever was, and it goes a long way towards justifying that whole hated genre of "emo"--which, like it or not, this album is.
MY RATING:
8.4
The Wrens - "Happy"
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