BIO/ PRESS

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Eliza’s melodious rock sometimes takes delicate or haunting
turns.
Lyrics retell history, assassinations, dreams, novels. The influences; Kinks,

Beatles, Tom Waits and vocal styles of Bjork, Mazzy Starr - are detectabe
amid
an array of world instruments including mandlin, sitar, bagpipes.

Originally from Austin, TX and currently living in Salt Lake City, UT, Eliza Wren

(singer/songwriter/filmmaker) both heads the rock band of the same name and
performs
solo. She has been performing and composing music since the age of
eight and has amassed
a collection of over 1000 original songs.

Music
featured at:
2002 Winter Olympic Games - Salt Lake City, UT
South by
Southwest Music Festival - Austin, TX
North by Northeast Music Festival - Toronto,
Canada
Sundance Film Festival - Park City, UT
Iceland Days - for President
Grimsson of Iceland
Anti-Folk Festival - NY, NY
Utah Arts Festival - Salt Lake
City
& in more than 50 film/television/theatre productions

Eliza has
shared the stage with The Beach Boys, Spoon, Fastball,
Death Cab for Cutie, Carolyn
Wonderland.

Current band members: Nord Anderson - guitar, Mike Crandall -
stand-up/electric bass,
Dan Pectol - drums.

Past band members (for
recording and/or live performance): Members of Spoon
(Jim Eno, Josh Zarbo), Justin
VonKennel, Nathan Aloysius, Chris Stelly, Douglas Erikson, Barrett Ogden, Eliza Wren
Payne, Brady Gunnell, Catherine Allred, Justin Taylor,
Brian Purrington, Bobby Miller,
Adam Crowell, Brian Locklin, Erich Ragsdale,
Mark Thomas, Jon Minor, Brian Pearson,
Wayne Duncan, Jason Fennimore
(See official EW playing cards for more
members)
And instruments: guitar, banjo, toy piano, organ, pedal steel, mandolin,
tamburitza,
toy piano, saw, stand-up bass, accordion, sitar, harp, bagpipe, drums

& alternative percussion.

CURRENT PROJECTS:

* Return to
Oz� original score for live performance to the cult film, Return to Oz, in tribute to Pink
Floyd’s best-selling album and music companion for The Wizard of Oz. Eliza Wren's
score is in production now with Eden’s Watchtower Records� in anticipation of a
national tour of the film with its alternative soundtrack.

*1800’s-styled,
Spaghetti Western inspired, Haun’s Mill Massacre�

*post-modern,
electronica, Italian horror-movie inspired Hallicrafters� � �

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� *Commerical Music Compositions: including documentries: -Rock the Bottom (Pro
Female Skateboarders) & Who Is It? (Crispin Glover) Eight Little Crickets
Films

PRESS & AWARDS:

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"All the painstaking work she put into the writing process pays off big
time. Thanks to her descriptive score - complete with unconventional instrumentation
including a banjo... The result is The Return to Oz Project, a concept album with 30
original songs synched to the film whose stunning visual and scant dialogue provide the
perfect backdrop for Wren's imaginative compositions." - Jenny Popar (City Weekly),
Dec. 2008

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"The best thing at SXSW" - Paul Adams (Real Producers,
London), March 2000

". . . adds incredible energy and lights up the
entire stage.� - Barry Pineo, The Austin Chronicle, December 1998

“ . . .
the best singer in Austin.� - John French, Runaway Mind Train, August
2001

SLUG Magazine� � "EW = Radiohead + (Fiery Furnaces – total
bizarrity) + Tom Waits As melancholy and complex as scarcity musicianship can muster,
Eliza Wren’s (new to SLC from Austin) compositions seem good for sleeping, but great
for strange dreaming to. SLUG’s own RMP describes her as "a gruff angel of
sorts," but only in an eerie heaven could the lost loves Wren speaks of evoke such
songs. She’s a heap of instruments at her fingers, but seems more likely to fondle a
lone banjo, crisply voicing breath-cut melodies than anything. Welcome to Salt Lake City,
Eliza. –Nate Martin, April 2005

Buscadera Magazine� � “We see a
showcase at Tower Records of ELiZA WREN, (who have reached) a new level of Texas pop
rock.� - Fernando Augelli, Buscadero Magazine, Italy, March 2002

“By far
the most impressive live show I've seen this year!" (Return to Oz- original live score
by Eliza Wren) - Joseph Weisenthal, owner of Thespian Seperatist Productions, December
2003

“The best thing since Cyndi Lauper.� - Leslie, Former Austin Mayoral
Candidate, February 2003

*Top Ten� � *Best of Austin - 10 Sleeper albums -
Halicrafters - January 2004

*Winner: Most Creative POP EP - Austin Radio
Awards - April 2002

*Nomination: Best Rock Video - Austin Music Network
Annual Awards - November 2003

*Top 10 Texas Videos - Roosevelt stays on
chart for 2 months - 2003

". . . and the mood sculptures of local siren
Eliza Wren. Quite a "Planet of Sound" for this 8pm-midnight affair."
(Retun to Oz performance)- Michael Chamy � Austin Chronicle - September
2003

Dancing About Archetecture� � � “Local songbird Eliza Wren has you
beat, so don't even bother. Wren just got back into town after opening for the Beach Boys
at the Olympic Games!� - Ken Lieck, Dancing About Architecture - March
2002

Recommended� � � "RECOMMENDED (09/03/03 @ Flipnotics
Coffeespace) Looking like an elfin candy striper in her wool hat and leggings, Austin’s
Eliza Wren completes the image with her disarmingly pixie-ish voice, equal parts precious
and precocious – Kristin Hersh at her slyest."- Raoul Hernandez

Alamo
Drafthouse "... in the tradition of Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon synced up
to The Wizard of Oz , Eliza Wren follows the yellow brick road into the dark mischief of
Walter Murch’s Return to Oz. A 1985 cult curiosity based on L. Frank Baum’s novel,
this Oz finds Dorothy fleeing a Kansas sanitarium and doing battle with beasties that make
the Wicked Witch of the West look like Tinkerbell. Wren, who bears a musical resemblance
to 16 Horsepower’s David Eugene Edwards, has composed 30 haunted lullabies that
quiver in her hallicrafted voice, along with her quartet’s complement of banjo and
mandolin. "Time Warp" times 10." – Raoul Hernandez
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Phases & Stages� � “"Two new discs from Austin's
multitalented Eliza Wren skip into the office like a pair of giggling Goth girls more
interested in Lee Harvey Oswald than any fictional vampire and all too happy with the
coming of spring's cruelest month to care much about either. Peradventure is a collection
of songs about the usual (love and loss) and the unusual (presidential assassination, a
young women sliding deeper into psychosis), presided over by Wren's banjo and sweetly
lilting voice amid beautiful arrangements that feature the various strings of Justin Von
Kennel, Nathan Aloysius' bass, and often the driving beats of drummer Chris Stelly. The
two main reasons to add this disc to your treasure are "Roosevelt" and
"Shipwrecked," the latter a tale of thwarted romance that has Wren's voice
long, lone, and wavering like a tiger swallowtail in a wind tunnel. Pony, meanwhile, is the
second album from the Wren-fronted Hallicrafters, abetted by stringman Brian Locklin and
producer Wes French, and is less a series of pub-friendly songs like Peradventure than an
exhibit of delicate musical surrealism. It's the Miranda Sex Garden disc you took a chance
on years ago, only better. And how many points can a band get for poignant topicality,
not to mention old-school Austin street cred, when the single cover among a vibrant sea
of originals is Roky Erickson's "Unforced Peace?" A gorgeous addition to the
ever-expanding soundscape of these complex times."� - Wayne Alan Brenner,
Phases & Stages - April 2003

TCB "Austin singer-songwriter Eliza
Wren, now 22, was all of 8 when she went to her sister's piano recital and decided on her
own career path shortly thereafter. "They announced the next song the person was
going to play was written by Mozart when he was 9," says Wren. "I was
thinking, 'Man, I'm 8. I can beat that record.' So I started writing songs from then
on." How did that first one sound? "I can still remember it," the Austin
native swears. "I mean, it's not great, but it's all right. Better than some of the next
ones I wrote." These days, the songs Wren writes are considerably more
accomplished. The McCallum High School grad's 2003 debut, Peradventure, is an airy,
charming affair reminiscent of Throwing Muse Kristin Hersh or Belly's Tanya Donelly. If she
sounds seasoned beyond her years, it's because her musical signposts consist of
"older stuff" like Tom Waits, Serge Gainsbourg, the Kinks, and the 13th Floor
Elevators. "The Beatles are what got me started on it," says Wren, "but
I've kind of washed them out of my system." Wren's voice also graces Pony, the new
disc by local group Hallicrafters, but here, it's mysterious and ethereal, like the Cocteau
Twins stranded deep in an Appalachian holler. She joined the group after an especially
serendipitous appearance on local station KOOP. "Somebody who was on the same
show was talking about how their uncle was looking for a singer," she says.
"They had this vision of a little girl with a butcher knife walking down a dark hallway
or something like that." Was that a compliment? "When I was a little kid, I
always liked ghosts and stuff like that," reveals Wren. "Everything I liked --
movies, music -- was really dark, and I never knew why. But I was always really happy; it
wasn't like I was disturbed or anything. So I felt pretty at home with that." -
Christopher Gray, TCB - May 2003

�_ Press Videos (more coming
soon)
(Click on video title to watch.
Sorry, they're a little warbly- we're working
on improving the quality)
�_ � Sundance 06 TV Coverage
�_ � Olympics
coverage
�_ � � � Morning Show
�_ � � � Holiday Special

View/ Download Official Promo Pack� � � � �

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