Going, Going

There have been a lot of really good albums released recently from the likes of King Creosote, Ette, Slow Club, Beyond The Wizards Sleeve and others which along with the pledges for the Raveonettes and The Orb and pre orders for future releases from Nick Waterhouse, the Lucid Dream and Toy have ensured that my bank balance is on a pretty sorry state. I think that on the whole it has been worth it.

There has also been the quite brilliant and at some times very surprising ninth studio album by the Wedding Present. This was also an album that was crowd funded through Pledge Music, with various packages on offer. It finally arrived last Friday.  On first listen of side one of the vinyl you would be mistaken for thinking that the wrong record had been pressed  as there are none of the jangly guitars that you associate with the band or Mr Gedge's distinctive vocals detailing relationships in all of their glory and heartache, in fact there are no vocals at all on the first four tracks. The songs on Going, Going are all linked and the result of trip across America that Gedge and  photographer Jessica McMillan undertook a couple of years ago.There is a dvd of short films that accompany the songs included in the beautifully packaged double lp but I have yet to watch them. Indie stalwarts make concept album shocker. The Lp is right up there with the best of the Wedding Present output but I do have difficulty with one track,  Secretary which for me is out of place and to be honest not very good at all but apart from that the other nineteen tracks are up to the standards you would expect from the band. Particular favourites at the moment are Spraque, with it's lovely strings and piano which is just too short and the final two tracks Rachel a song that could be said to be typical Weddoes fare but no worse for that and then the epic closer with it's nod to George Best, Like all other Wedding Present albums this is an essential purchase.

Talking about the Wedding Present, here is my favourite track from the last album, 2012's  Valentina, although there is a lyric that bugs me "and when you entered your number in my phone" which I don't think would have been possible as when the DDR was in existence and the Wall was still up,mobile phones were rather thin on the ground, so unless the character was a very early adopter or a city spiv he wouldn't have had one and it probably wouldn't have been able to have connected with the East German phone network anyway.  Apart from that it's a fucking great song. This is why I try never to listen to lyrics too closely as I have a tendency to over analyse them.

The Wedding Present - The Girl From The DDR