The Wedding Present takes Chicago fans down Memory Lane

October 1, 2008, at the Empty Bottle

By Katie Heath
Published: October 4th, 2008 | 12:50pm

Although the lineup has changed over the past two decades — currently including Terry de Castro (bass, backing vocals), Graeme Ramsay (drums), and Chris McConville (guitar) — David Gedge, the Wedding Present’s founder, lead singer–guitarist, and resident sensitive guy, remains front and center. Halfway into its 2008 North America tour, the quintessential British indie-rock band of the ’80s and ’90s treated Chicago fans to a trip down Memory Lane, reminiscent of years panged with unrequited love — namely Gedge’s — and cassette-tape romances. “A late night,” Gedge quipped about the 11 o’clock hour, "Aren’t we supposed to have jobs and children at home?"

Formed in 1985 in Leeds, England, the Wedding Present co-opted the sounds of English contemporaries such as the Smiths, Orange Juice, the Fall, and Gang of Four, and blended them into its own brand of guitar-driven, jangly indie-pop. At the pinnacle of their career in the early ‘90s, the band members were known as darlings of legendary BBC radio DJ John Peel, who helped escort the band to the top of independent charts.

Now living and writing in Hollywood, the Wedding Present’s eighth studio album, El Ray (Manifesto), illustrates themes of romance and the superficial in the City of Angels. Recorded in Chicago with iconic noise-rock sound engineer Steve Albini, El Rey finds the Wedding Present in a more mature, polished state of rocknroll.

In person, there’s no doubt that Gedge has a penchant for wearing his heart on his sleeve when he sings. His exterior of a broody male with permanently pissed facial features, juxtaposed with his sensitive, unabashed lyrics came across a bit awkward at times in the newer material. While some lyricists try to fluff up their accounts of romance with abstraction and distant metaphors, Gedge is deadpan about the way he feels. Usually less cringe-inducing, it’s clear that the last two decades, and our computer generation’s less-than-sexy expressions, have taken away some from Gedge’s lyrical libido. Tonight when he sang on “Model, Actress, Whatever,” “When I stare at you, okay it’s just a JPEG (I have a few),” you wish he hadn’t.

Despite the set lasting nearly an hour, the crowd’s appetite, belonging to legions of record-shop junkies in or around their 30s, never dissipated. Newer hits such as “The Thing I Like Best About Him is His Girlfriend,” one of El Ray’s rockier songs, as well as “Palisades,” in which de Castro cooed quite perfectly, satisfied and transitioned well between the old and the new.

But the mature crowd was insistent about song requests from earlier works and quite vocal about their nostalgia. Dodging requests like these seems to be common practice for Gedge, though. Understandably defensive, he coolly placed the blame on de Castro, exaggerating that she had worked too hard on the set list to change it.

And then shit, as they say, hit the fan. “We never do encores,” Gedge warned us at what felt like the final romp of the evening. And then, with no warning, the group yielded to the crowd’s desires with the deliverance of the seriously sexy tracks “Dallience” and “Dare,” both of which famed its 1991 album Seamonsters (RCA). Certain hysteria broke out in the crowed and the evening ended in an atmosphere dense with whirlwind guitars, heavy distortion, and with tempos structured like climaxes. There’s no denying the role of these songs as soundtracks for Gen Xers getting laid those years, either.