The Wedding Present, Marc Riley Sessions, Volume 1 (Hatch Records) **** REMEMBER the days when John Peel sessions by The Cure, Buzzcocks and New Order for his late-night vigil on BBC Radio One cropped up on the Strange Fruit label?
Now Hatch Records and the Beeb's 6 Music station are reprising the format to assemble three sessions recorded for Marc Riley's show by Leeds-rooted indie stalwarts The Wedding Present between 2007 and 2010.
Riley describes releasing the itchy guitar-powered, career-spanning song choices by David Gedge and co as "something of an honour", and if the timing seems arbitrary, nevertheless it comes in the wake of last year's Going, Going...studio album and accompanying short films, which affirmed The Wedding Present would not be going, going, gone any time soon.
Gedge's kitchen-sink dramas, all caustic-tongued and witty accounts of love's fumblings, frustrations and frictions, range from 1987 gem Everyone Thinks He Looks Daft and 1989's Brassneck to 2008's Palisades and a 2010 taster of Mystery Date, later to emerge on 2012's Valentina. The Wedding Present combine past and present on each session to consistently vital effect.
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