In a moment when violently distorted rage rap can breach the mainstream and avant-garde jazz artists are grafting traditional ensemble arrangements onto the hyperreal textures of club music, WRENS’ “Charlie Parker” manages to stake one of the year’s strangest, most exhilarating claims in either realm. Drummer Jason Nazary propels the Brooklyn quartet forward with a wounded gait, just ahead of plucky synths and a flute on the verge of hysterics, while frontman and trumpeter Ryan Easter reframes boilerplate trap and drill imagery for a jazz-leaning audience. Pistols aimed at “opps,” chickens sizzling like the roadkill devoured by the track’s titular saxophonist—Easter packs his verse with surreal, cartoonish brutality. Over it all, Ikue Mori-style data chirps, staggered basslines, and mangled drum fills swirl in a dust cloud of chaos, while Easter oscillates between street-rap mafioso, jazz virtuoso, and sensitive young man, each persona overlapping and revealing their shared absurdity. The song teeters on gimmickry but never topples: WRENS’ technical fluency and impeccable taste keep the playfulness sincere, a feat replicated across their sophomore effort, Half of What You See.
The band’s 2023 debut, alligator shoes [on flatbush], was a sprawling double album capturing sessions before and after the addition of cellist Lester St. Louis. Its maximalist tendencies—dense improvisation, IDM-tinged synths vying for attention—sometimes veered toward eccentricity for its own sake. Half of What You See retains the band’s quirks but tempers them with intent. On the instrumental “Longbow,” electronics accent the performance’s surface, never eclipsing the tense harmonic dialogue between cello and murmuring keys. Every element occupies space with patience: strings loop in measured arcs while Easter and pianist Elias Stemeseder riff over the same motifs. Even in moments of near-chaos—like the ambient synth progression on “Intro” briefly souring into panic—Easter’s trumpet steadies the band, a tether across the turbulence.
When Easter switches to vocals, the chemistry crystallizes. On the punchline-laden “Snake,” he channels a rap god/devil dichotomy, his measured cadence conjuring Earl Sweatshirt’s languor and Lil B’s playful swagger simultaneously. Humor anchors abstraction: Biblical imagery collides with vulgar desire—“sit atop a bag like an audience for Oprah” and “watch you toot that ass”—collapsing highbrow and lowbrow into a single, gleeful pulse. Easter becomes a mediator between avant-garde jazz and club-infused rap, proving that the collision of cerebral and bodily thrills can feel effortless.
WRENS’ electroacoustic jazz-rap recalls the exploratory tangents of electric Miles and Ornette Coleman’s flirtations with post-punk on Of Human Feelings: messy, idiosyncratic, and stubbornly human. Across Half of What You See, the band’s improvisatory instincts dominate but never alienate; eccentricity is the byproduct of curiosity, not affectation. As Easter sums up on “Interlude”: “All I got to say is I hope that for all this work we do…there’s some ass when I get back home.” The line, comic and corporeal, might as well serve as a thesis for the album itself: boundary-pushing artistry grounded in flesh, pleasure, and unrelenting fun.
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