Craig Wedren
(Nerveland Recordings)
Occasional Shudder to Think frontman and full-time film/TV composer Craig Wedren has said that Wand, his second solo LP (hard as that is to believe) and first in six years, is an intentional smorgasbord that hopefully offers more gems than duds. Which it does, even if not by a landslide.
Sixteen tracks does seem like a lot, after all, especially from an artist who's ostensibly self-recording as lark/release between scoring films for The State/Wet Hot American Summer/Reno 911!'s comedic braintrust - Wedren created the original music for all three and is old college friends with David Wain, Thomas Lennon et al - and the latest season of HBO's Hung. And at times, Wand does become something of a scavenger hunt for dedicated fans.
There are some too-familiar echoes of seminal Shudder to Think ("Cupid") and transitional ambient experiments ("In School") that probably won't make the cut of fans' annotated Wand playlists. But if a purposeful lapse in total quality control allowed Wedren to summon the contagious power-pop on rambunctious sparkler "Make Me Hurt You," hand-clap street-riffage of "Factory Girl" and the gorgeous, only slightly cheeky ballad "Heaven Sent," then it's worth the dig.
DOWNLOAD: "Heaven Sent," "I Know," "Make Me Hurt You," "Are We" KENNY HERZOG
