CRAIG WEDREN
The Dream Dreaming
“Brian Eno talks about the myth of pre-organization, but nobody knows what they’re doing until they’re done. This record is absolutely proof of that.” So says Craig Wedren of The Dream Dreaming, which began life as what the operatic-voiced former Shudder To Think frontman envisioned as a series of COVID-era singles but eventually grew into his first proper solo album since 2017’s Adult Desire. “These songs didn’t have to sound like a four-piece rock band or be strictly electronic,” he adds. “As the bigger picture started making itself clear, I realized, it’s eclectic and sonically whimsical, and that’s a great thing.”
Whimsy with an endearing dollop of weird has been Wedren’s raison d’etre since his late teenage days leading the unclassifiable Shudder To Think, who were once accurately described as the “fanciful chimera” of the Dischord Records roster alongside the comparatively straightforward post-hardcore sounds of Fugazi and Jawbox. In the time since Shudder To Think’s final 1997 studio album, Wedren has recorded solo and with the band BABY, crafted ambient choral music under the Sabbath Sessions moniker, and become a go-to name in the worlds of film and TV scoring, with credits ranging from School of Rock, Wet Hot American Summer and Laurel Canyon to Showtime’s recent hit Yellowjackets.
These disparate versions of Wedren equally inform The Dream Dreaming, which is further elevated by the presence of two new collaborators: Lana Del Rey/Olivia Rodrigo strings player Paul Cartwright, whose stunning arrangements can be heard on nearly all of the album’s 11 songs, and Awolnation drummer Isaac Carpenter, who co-wrote the table-setting opening track, “Fingers on My Face” and plays on several others. Wedren’s longtime scoring partner Anna Waronker also lends her vocals to the bittersweet duet “All Made Up,” which he started writing while visiting his ailing father in Miami shortly before his early 2020 passing.
“There’s something very psychedelic about this record,” Wedren observes. “It breathes, billows, ebbs, and flows without guardrails. That’s something I really wanted, especially coming from the scoring world, where things need to be pretty sonically fixed once you figure out the palette or the tone.” The Dream Dreaming is also Wedren’s first album since he had a major, out-of-the-blue heart attack in 2018 (“I needed to have some fun after having five stents jammed into my ticker,” he says).
As he worked on the project, the artist was further inspired by ‘80s megaliths such as Peter Gabriel’s So, Dire Straits’ Brothers in Arms, and Def Leppard’s Hysteria: “bold, often maximal productions that were aiming to hit it out of the park commercially while operating from a spirit of experimentation, exploration, and adventure. I didn’t love some of these records at the time, precisely for their grandiosity and bombast, but they were fantastic cheerleaders while making The Dream Dreaming.” To help achieve that epic sound, Craig enlisted Billy Bush (Garbage) as mixer.
While Shudder To Think fans will instinctively gravitate towards the oblong guitar and bass interplay of “Going Sane,” the “how the hell did this get from point A to point B” bricolage of “You Are Not Your Feelings” and the strings-encircled, chugging riffs of “Fingers on My Face,” an even more intriguing side of Wedren emerges on songs such as the percussive musical birthday present to his wife Meggan, “W. 52nd,” the soothing, sultry and piano-led “Play Innocent” and “The New Walking” and “The Daily-Thank You,” two of the strangest Wedren compositions, well, ever. The material often feels like two or three tracks in one, a musical zig-zag Wedren says was “really up to the songs themselves.”
“When I get bored or get the Spidey Sense tingling that I’m about to get bored, I make contrasting musical choices,” he notes. “The points at which you hear things that at first may not seem like they go together are the points where I was like, ehhh, I’m feeling restless!”
Admittedly a “lyrics come last”-type of guy under normal circumstances, Wedren pushed himself to write words “that both sang well, or had good mouthfeel, phonetically, and read decently. I was raised by English teachers, so I’m a stickler,” he says with a chuckle. “Play Innocent” draws from bygone days of holding hands with girls at summer camp, while “You Are Not Your Feelings” transports us right into the living room of young Wedren’s Cleveland family home. You can almost feel “the mist on the window of a memory of a sad Sunday watching the Browns,” he offers.
The presence of Waronker was especially welcome on “All Made Up,” owing to its difficult subject matter. “The lyrics were all the things I was thinking of as I was walking around Miami essentially killing time, because there’s only so many hours you can be bedside,” Wedren says. “The song needed some tenderness and to not be as insular as walking around by yourself with these ideas in your head about imminent demise. Anna took the guitar hook and made it her lead vocal, so it becomes almost a nursery rhyme or lullaby. I love working with her, because we write songs and record them, and invariably they find beautiful homes in movies or TV shows.”
Wedren is also creating an accompanying visual world for The Dream Dreaming, led by a series of videos made on his own and with new collaborators such as Mary Wigmore, Tracy Hoff and Shon Hedges (“they’re parents we met through school who also happen to be insane artists or creative types,” Wedren says. “It’s a little bonus you get from living in Los Angeles”).
Wedren is hoping the opportunity will present itself to share the new songs in a live setting as well, but in the meantime, The Dream Dreaming can be enjoyed as both the perfect musical uncoupling and reconciliation of his many muses. “D.C. punk, heavy alternative, ‘80s and ‘90s pop, dance music, and soundtracks – the cubicles all fell away and it became a common romper room for the entire history of what I love and where I’m coming from musically. In the same way I was inviting friends in to do whatever they wanted, it was the same way with all the genres I love. I’m so happy The Dream Dreaming is all-inclusive in that sense.”
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