Craig Wedren, former frontman for Shudder To Think, has announced a January 26th release date for upcoming album, The Dream Dreaming. Coming out via his own Tough Lover Records label, the album is his first since 2017’s Adult Desire. To go with this announcement, Wedren has also released the song and video, “Fingers On My Face.” Check it out below.
Wedren dedicates the new song to his wife and “partner in time,” noting:
““Fingers On My Face” is a time traveling song that takes us backward and forward, from my teens into old age, but always from the perspective of the present. It’s about the speed of things, and the ever changing, taffy-like experience of time.”
“Mainly, “Fingers On My Face” is a reminder that physical contact is a reliably transcendent force that can help us get out of our heads -regretting or mythologizing the past, worrying about or anticipating the future- and into our bodies in the here-and-now, snapping us out of our trance and connecting us to eternity and to each other.”
“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,” says Wedren of The Dream Dreaming, which began life as what the operatic-voiced musician envisioned as a series of COVID-era singles but eventually grew into a full-length project.. “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.”
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, 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 chest,” he says.
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 my son’s 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.”
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The Dream Dreaming can be enjoyed as both the perfect musical uncoupling and reconciliation of Wedren’s 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.”
The Dream Dreaming tracklisting:
01 Fingers On My Face
02 Nothing Bad
03 Pronouns
04 52nd St
05 Going Sane
06 You Are Not Your Feelings
07 The New Walking
08 Play Innocent
09 All Made Up
10 The Daily Thank You
11 On My Tongue
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.