Craig Wedren Announces Album 'The Dream Dreaming' & Shares New Single

Whimsy with an endearing dollop of weird. This has been acclaimed musician and film / tv composer Craig Wedren's raison d'etre since his days as the frontman for Shudder To Think – the accurately described “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.

Today, Wedren announces The Dream Dreaming, his first new album since 2017's Adult Desire, due January 26th via his own Tough Lover Records. Along with the album announcement, Craig shares the album's lead single, “Fingers on My Face."

“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, 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 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.”

Watch the video for “Fingers on My Face,” co-directed by Wedren and Shon Hedges and featuring both recently-filmed and vintage footage, here:

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.”

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