“It’s like walking through a forest on a Sunday morning, barefoot,” described one girl over dinner. “But with moss; there’s moss everywhere,” chimed in a man across the table. Another woman nodded in agreement, “And sap, the light is reflecting off the sap.” When you ask fans to describe Wren’s music, you rarely get a one-word answer; more often, you will get an experience. Wren’s new album Bone Nest, full of metaphor and unique imagery, is a journey. It’s about death, and then rebirth, told not by conventional story line, but rather through sensations, which evoke a universal human experience of struggle and transcendence.
With all-original songs by Wren and featuring vocalist Ariana Taylor-Stanley and fiddler Brittany Newell of the late Nettle Honey, Bone Nest is Wren’s first studio release. Wren performs original alternative folk music on a classical guitar with fiddle, vocal, and percussion accompaniment. The music is soothing and whimsical, grounded in gentle vocal harmonies, classical guitar finger-picking, and sweeping fiddle lines. Described as possessing a “naturalness and a philosophical bent at the same time,” Wren’s haunting melodies evoke the lands and waters of her native Pacific Northwest, as well as Galicia, Spain, where she lived for a year, learning the traditional Celtic-influenced coastal music.
A published poet before she turned to songwriting, Wren’s lyrics are lively and unexpected. They tantalize your senses, tug at a distant memory, a sensation of childhood in nature, but leave you to discover the meaning. As Greg Bennet recently summed up in the Victory Review, “When an acoustic singer writes her own songs it adds another dimension to the music. [Bone Nest] is a refreshing change from the commercial material we hear on the radio. Wren is a beautiful musical artist and has a very sincere passion for her music…and her minstrel style of singing and guitar music.”
In contrast to contemporary music’s tendency towards complexity and overproduction, Wren is a gentle reminder of the simplicity and depth that can be found with a few voices, singing an honest truth. She does not shy away from pain, jealousy, or despair. In fact, that is what Bone Nest is all about: going back to the rocks and the earth, picking up the pecked-over bones of a prior self and weaving them back to together, bit by bit, into a nest, where life can begin again.
Wren will be celebrating the official release of Bone Nest with family, friends, and the public July 13th at the Rendezvous at 10pm. She will also be joined by vocalist and new band member, Gianna Starble.
Banner Photo by Ryan Eastridge