Wrens members split, Kevin Whelan releasing new songs as Aeon Station via Sub Pop

We've been waiting for the new The Wrens album for almost two decades, and while Charles Bissell continues to tinker with his contributions to The Meadowlands' follow-up, the band's other songwriter and singer, Kevin Whelan, has taken the songs he wrote for the album, added more, and is releasing them as an album, Observatory, under the name Aeon Station. Whelan says the album “sounds like a band but isn’t.”

According to a feature in The New York Times, Whelan plays almost every instrument on the album, but it also features contributions from his Wrens bandmates Greg Whelan (his brother) and Jerry MacDonald, but not Bissell.

Part of this stemmed from not wanting to wait anymore for Bissell to finish his songs, and the article notes that a completed album was given to Sub Pop in 2013 but that Bissell then backed out. “The songs were great,” Whelan told the Times. “But I always say that. I’m that guy. He’s the other guy. I’m good with the third take, he’s like, I need three years of takes."

The New York Times writes that in 2019, "Bissell declared the album fit for release. But first, he wanted to work out 'internal band stuff' and this is when, after more than 30 years of calling themselves a band, the Wrens unraveled."