Good morning, 2009. True to form and band lore, the mighty Wrens released one of the past decade’s best albums, like they do … and then retreated to too many years at their day jobs, to play the occasional gig here and contribute to our Automatic For The People tribute there. Like they do. And now it’s time for a followup. Well it’s been time for a followup, but this time it’s FOR REALS. They’re kicking it all off with a “new” song (which I put air quotes around because you’ll recognize it from your Gum Drop inbox when it was a demo called “In Turkish Waters,” only now it has the whole band and has been renamed “Pulled Fences” and was recorded at Abbey Road because that is a place you record things). A breathless press blast came around last night from Absolutely Kosher to set the scene:

We here at Absolutely Kosher Records are practically peeing in our pants with excitement to officially announce the commencement of recording for The Wrens fourth full length album. To kick off recording the band is offering up the new single, “Pulled Fences” digitally (available as of today!!!!). “Pulled Fences” was recorded at the historic and incomparable Abbey Road Studios for WORLDSPACE satellite radio in London, England and marks the first time since 1999 that Charles, Kevin, Jerry and Greg were in one room working on new music together.

Additionally, 2009 marks The Wrens 20th anniversary as a band. Throughout The Wrens 20 years together it has been a secret challenge that if they we were ever able to play in a setting that seemed rather important like lets say, ABBEY ROAD!…. That they would have the guts to make up a brand new song on the spot… and that is exactly what happened with “Pulled Fences”. Keep in mind that this was a pretty precarious undertaking, given that the song was being broadcast over the internet, video-taped, and there was a small live audience in the room. Kevin had written “Pulled Fences” ahead of time, but Charles, Greg and Jerry had never seen the chords, or heard the song. What you hear in “Pulled Fences” is a first take. It was rather risky to say the least… which of course, made it that much better.

Here’s how the band explained the “In Turkish Waters” –> “Pulled Fences” transformation:

So Kev wrote down the chords for one of his demo songs (which was just recently released as ‘In Turkish Waters’ for the Fake Bookshelf issue of the nifty Australian magazine, the Lifted Brow ), and what you hear on the single is the first run-through of a song the rest of us hadn’t heard before with guitars made up on the spot, drums, piano, singing and lyrics, all sort of improvised.

They wrote a long letter on the whole Abbey Road endeavor and forthcoming album at the new and improved wrens.com, stuffing 64 months worth of “what did we miss?” jokes into nearly as many paragraphs, but the screed ends on the money note:

So all that’s the typically long-butted way of saying that a week from Monday – that’s the 19th – we reconvene in the basement and start recording music to follow-up the Meadowlands. And we’ll see you in Austin in March.

Add ‘em to your SXSW wishlist, and get out your credit card to part with $0.99 for “Pulled Fences” right here. Welcome back, guys.

• The Wrens – “Everyone Choose Sides”Download

[Pick of Greg and Charles from their set of Abbey Road pictures]