Professional ratings
Aggregate scores
Source	Rating
Metacritic	85/100
Review scores
Source	Rating
AllMusic
Mojo
NME	9/10
Pitchfork Media	9.5/10
Q
Stylus Magazine	A−
Tiny Mix Tapes	5/5
The Village Voice	A

The Meadowlands is the third studio album by American indie rock band The Wrens. It was released by Absolutely Kosher Records on September 9, 2003 and in the UK and Europe two years later on September 19, 2005 by LO-MAX Records. A UK limited edition version with two extra tracks, "Such a Pretty Lie" and "Nervous and Not Me", was released on February 27, 2006. The album was named after the New Jersey Meadowlands, the wetlands near the Wrens' home in New Jersey.

Recording of the album began in January 1999, after the band had spent the whole of the previous year courting record labels following their departure from Grass Records. Drummer Jerry MacDonald had married and moved out of the house that all four band members had shared when younger, but the other three members remained living in the house in Fort Lee, New Jersey where the album was recorded, MacDonald joining them when circumstances allowed to record his drum parts. However, an album that was supposed to be recorded in a few weeks ended up taking four years to complete. It is commonly believed that the circumstances regarding the Wrens split from Grass Records was the main factor preventing the band from making new music (the label halted all distribution and promotion of the Wrens' previous two albums after the band turned down a new recording contract, worried that they would be forced to change to a more mainstream sound). However, in an interview in 2004 guitarist Charles Bissell said that exhaustion and loss of confidence in their writing was a more decisive reason:

"We did spend a couple years dealing with lawyers and labels. But after we released an EP in '97, we were at a plateau with our music. We weren't moving forward anymore. We were sort of exhausted. I had lost perspective and didn't know what was good anymore and couldn't write lyrics. We needed to crank out another album, but weren't sure why... There seemed to be no end in sight because every song sucked, every idea was bad. We didn't know what to do."

After a couple of years of rewriting and scrapping entire tracks, the band hired engineer Alan Douches to master the tracks, and the introduction of a non-judgemental outsider helped to lift the pressure and move the recording process along. After taking a rest during the summer of 2002, the band went back into the studio between November 2002 and February 2003 to complete recording and re-sequence the album.

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