Car Colors, the new project from the Wrens’ Charles Bissell, has released its first song. “Old Death” is out today digitally, as well as on 12″ vinyl. It comes with the B-sides “And It’s All Guns and Arrows” and “I’ll Bear.” The new songs preview the project’s debut album, which is due in early 2024. Check out the Kyle Garrett–directed video for “Old Death” below. Bissell said of the new song in a statement:

“Old Death is, like the rest of the album, sort of a sequel to The Meadowlands before it and like that one, is about time, how one chooses to spend it, what those choices cost. That means for me, the song (and album) is also about making the album itself. It’s about death, maybe obviously, but it’s really about my dumb life. And because so much of that life lined up weirdly well to the Odyssey, it’s all sorta hung on Homer’s narrative framework (while unlike say, Ulysses, in my case it’s all very non-fictional/auto-biographical). However like Ulysses, every song is written in a stream-of-consciousness mode. Or for me, really more of a stream-of-memories: that time this happened, that other-time-this-reminds-me-of happened etc. Hence, the parenthetical dating throughout the lyrics as those memories pop in & out. So basically like, unlike, like and then unlike Ulysses-ha.

Bissell announced his new songs in October while noting that his former band, the Wrens, was no more. Kevin Whelan formed a new band called Aeon Station in 2021, and, when Bissell announced that the band was no more, Aeon Station responded by casting uncertainty on the Wrens’ future. “Though Charles has decided to leave the band, it does not mean that the band has broken up. 3/4 of The Wrens continue to work together writing, recording music, and playing shows as Aeon Station,” the band wrote. “Who knows what the future may hold for the Wrens.”

Read the review of “Old Death.”