Pick the Cat's Eyes Out

I forgot how unfuckablewith Meadowland's "white trash" vibe was. Okay, maybe that's coming on a tad strong (though the track "She Sends Kisses" does include the term "white trash" in its rather wayward narrative). The characters in the Wrens' songs aren't morally rubbished or for the most part, spiritually rubbished; but there is the sense they've been left at the end of life's driveway.

They're hometown loiterers who say things like, "All's well in hell and all here's hoping." They busy themselves with activities like writing letters, or better yet, imagining themselves writing letters; they remain in Jersey and the (imagined) recipient of their letters are anywhere but. They hold onto the keepsakes that casually remind of better days. They're 9-to-5 worn ("tied to work / splitting rocks"). They're pigeon-holed ("I can't type / I can't temp"). They're trapped by economics and ennui ("bored and rural-poor, lord, at 35, right?"). They've wasted on ("I've wasted on"). I'm still shocked Zach Braff never soundtracked a song from Meadowlands, as that album and Garden State pick at the same 30-something uneasiness (though Meadowlands does it more deftly, of course): reflecting on what-could-have-beens, resisting life's determinedness to have you surrender and "settle in," fighting this realization that Jersey (or, fill in the blank) chose you, and not vice-versa.

"You keep saying Jersey’s not a home" goes a line in "Thirteen Grand." Well, they were correct: it's a furnace. A big, God-damn furnace that only remains alight when the loiterers climb inside and burrow down into the embers. "Someone's got to remain behind," they say, and watch over the old beach house rented at Cape May or make certain the next generation still plays spin the bottle and takes bad drugs or be sure there are girls still cheesy enough to sign love letters with "Hope & Hearts," inadvertently granting someone the belief they will one day harbor the ability to make that hometown "flight." But at their core, the loiterers know this is all just busywork until the inevitable burn-down to ash.

Meadowlands is like someone wafted the smoke away with their hands so you can get a better view of the smoldering.