Month: July 2024

I finished off last week by referring to the February 2005 release of Take Fountain, the so-called ‘comeback’ record by The Wedding Present, their sixth studio album all told, but their first since September 1996.

It was perhaps a bit disappointing for all concerned that the album only reached #68 in the UK charts, which was a much poorer performance than any of the previous five efforts.  But then again, it performed way better than any of the three Cinerama albums that had been issued in the intervening years, as none of them cracked the Top 100.

I think that what makes it all the more disappointing is the fact that Take Fountain is an excellent record, packed throughout with great songs.  Sure, it is completely different in sound from the 80s and 90s ‘classics’, but David Gedge‘s songwriting skills and talents had matured considerably, and there was never really any chance of him churning out another set of tunes akin to George Best or Bizarro.

There is a (mostly) fine summary of the album over at allmusic, written by Andy Kelman:-

“From the start, Cinerama was not a drastic diversion from the Wedding Present. David Gedge rounded off whatever remaining edges were left in the Weddoes’ sound and developed a crack chamber pop group. Softer songs off Watusi and Saturnalia, such as “Catwoman,” “2, 3 Go,” and “Real Thing,” dropped hints.

Gedge’s gruff yelps vanished, replaced by bedroom whispers; roaring electric guitars were swapped out for delicate acoustic strums, with extensive use of strings, brass, woodwinds, and keyboards. After Cinerama released their first album, they began to sound more and more like the Wedding Present, to the point where the two groups were virtually indistinguishable from one another.

In 2004, Gedge and his associates began recording the fourth Cinerama album with Watusi producer Steve Fisk and resurfaced instead with the sixth Wedding Present album. To no surprise, Take Fountain sounds just like Cinerama and the Wedding Present. Opener “Interstate 5” gets it across right off the bat, its first six minutes an effectively repetitive chugging groove that shifts into a drifting hybrid of Ennio Morricone and John Barry for the final two minutes — a bracing zip up the West Coast turns into a restful gondola ride alongside an Italian village.

From then on, the album is populated by a range of three- to four-minute pop songs that you’re accustomed to hearing from Gedge. For every hushed, playful passage, there’s an explosive chorus, and for every verse dealing with some form of romantic frustration, there’s…a bunch of romantically frustrated verses. Most songs are of the standard that made Gedge one of the most loved indie figures of the ’80s and ’90s, though the bluntly sexual phrasings that repelled George Best/Tommy-era fans from Watusi, Saturnalia, and everything released by Cinerama remain. Take Fountain is a solid Wedding Present album, one that will satisfy those who have been following Gedge all along.”

While I take umbrage at his assertion that after Cinerama released their first album they began to sound more and more like the Wedding Present (a point of view which could easily be dismissed by reading all that strangeways has offered up on this blog in recent months), Kelman’s overall take is quite sound. 

One more single – a very low-key affair, was issued on CD, in October 2005:-

mp3 : The Wedding Present – Ringway to Seatac

Romantically frustrated indeed!!!

I’m thinking that the single was issued partly as a vehicle to finally release the one last song recorded during the Take Fountain sessions that hadn’t yet seen the light of day:-

mp3 : The Wedding Present – Shivers

No loud guitars or drums.  A slow and very resigned vocal delivery over what is almost a music-box style accompaniment.  More evidence that the musicians had gone into the Seattle studio prepared to make a Cinerama album.  And while it was mostly possible to re-arrange things so that everything now sounded like a TWP song, it just wasn’t feasible with Shivers.  It’s a real oddity, but one that has a certain amount of charm.

One other track was made available, but it was recorded separately and Dare Mason, who had been involved in all three Cinerama albums, is given a production credit.

mp3: The Wedding Present – American Tan

It’s a strange one.  There’s nothing remotely Cinerama-sounding about it, despite those involved in the production.  It’s only 95 seconds long, and it comes to a rather sudden stop, despite there having been a continuous lyric.  The lack of any instrumental break has me wondering if it was really a demo waiting to be worked up.  Either way, it’s kind-of TWP by numbers and I have no real strong feelings about it.

Next time around will see the series reach 2008….the year that the seventh studio album El Rey was released.  It’s a period of time when the TWP website makes no mention of any singles being released, but there’s three such items from 2008 listed on Discogs.   I’ll do my best to muddle through.

JC

I apologise for beginning the latest instalment of this series with a spoiler.

The 34th single released by The Wedding Present here in the UK has proved, thus far, to be the last time the band was credited with a chart hit in that particular format.

The ‘return’ of the band in late 2004, via the Interstate 5 single (see last week), led to a great deal of positive press, with many of the interviews and features taking the opportunity not just to have a backwards glance at the recording output of Cinerama, but to remind everyone that going back to the mid-80s, TWP had been responsible for the creation of some of the finest indie-pop/rock music of its generation.  There was, for the time being, much more awareness of the band than perhaps the period when the 12 singles in a year project had been undertaken, and so quite a lot was riding on the next single and the new album, both of which were due for release in February 2005.

The fact that the single had such a great title, one that a certain Manchester-born songwriter with whom David Gedge had often been compared would have been proud to have come up with, just added to the intrigue

mp3: The Wedding Present – I’m From Further North Than You

The song had originally been aired during some live Cinerama shows back in 2003.  Back then, the song was called Edinburgh.   Indeed, it was first recorded under the title of Edinburgh for a John Peel Session which aired in June 2003

mp3: Cinerama – Edinburgh (Peel Session)

David Gedge, in a on-line interview given a few years later, is very much the best person to explain:-

The original title was suggested by the story in the lyric… i.e. that the narrator had met someone with a Scottish accent but had initially mistaken them as being from the south of England. Edinburgh has always been one of my favourite cities and so I decided to use that as being where the other person was from. I think it sounded quite romantic to me.

But, later, I decided that, firstly, I wanted the title to be more literal but also, I wanted to reference that pride of being northern that would cause a northerner to feel appalled if someone mistook them for a southerner! Hence the outrage implied in “No, I’m not from the south, I am from further north than you!”

It’s a fabulous pop song, with one of his finest lyrics. There’s a world of difference in the way the two versions were recorded and produced, and in particular the guitar solos that come after the line(s) that end ‘and you needed a friend’, which certainly hark back in some ways to the Seamonsters-era.

The single came in at #34.  The last time TWP had achieved that high a chart placing without the gimmick of the limited edition singles had been fourteen years previously, when Dalliance came in at #29. 

Before I get to the b-sides etc, here’s your chance to enjoy the promo video:-

Yup.   Filmed in Edinburgh…..and I’ve walked in many of the locations used!  Oh, and the captions suggesting the conversation(s) are packed with snippets from Cinerama songs.  It’s all rather clever and brilliant.

The single was release on 7″ vinyl and CD.   The 7″ actually had a remix of the single on one side and a track that wasn’t included on the CD.

mp3: The Wedding Present – I’m From Further North Than You (Klee Remix)
mp3: The Wedding Present – Nickels and Dimes

It’s not so much a remix as a totally different version.  Klee are a band from Koln, Germany, and back in 2005 consisted of Suzie Kerstgens (vocals), Sten Servaes (keyboards) and Tom Deininger (guitars).   My understanding is that Simon Cleave of TWP lived in the German city in the early 2000s, and so he may well have been the conduit for getting Klee involved – it’s worth remembering that Simon co-wrote all of the songs that would appear on the new album.   Whether all of Klee played on this version or not, I’m not sure….but it certainly sounds as if Suzie is there on co-vocals.

Nickels and Dimes is another that Cinerama had previously recorded for a John Peel session, and yet in this version you would be hard pushed to identify it as being from the era of that band.  It’s not one that I find myself revisiting very often. 

Here’s the two songs to be found on the CD single:-

mp3: The Wedding Present – Rekindling
mp3: The Wedding Present – The Girl With The Curious Smile

The former is a short mid-tempo number, at just over two minutes in length.  It’s decent enough, with a nice guitar solo and arrangement at its back-end, without being one that many fans would likely place in the top half of any rundown of TWP songs. 

The latter, and perhaps the title is a bit of a giveaway, is very much a Cinerama number rather than a TWP effort….from the whistling early on right through to the orchestral flushes via the keyboards.  It’s a bit of a hidden gem.

With the single appearing just a couple of weeks in advance of the new album, Take Fountain, the collection of songs on the b-sides, as well as the three songs that had made up Interstate 5, certainly created a fair bit of intrigue as to how it would actually sound.  I’ll try and cover that off next week………

JC

I have the unenviable task of trying to maintain the quality of the past ten Sundays during which strangeways wrote about the Cinerama era in such an eloquent, informative and entertaining manner.   I’ll do my best, but I have great reservations that I can match the quality that has been on show.

Last time round in this series, we reached 1997.   Time travel now takes us to 15 November 2004.

The first half of that particular year had seen Cinerama play some dates in Holland, Germany and the UK prior to the musicians heading into a studio to begin the recording of a new album.   A number of the new songs had already been aired thanks to a couple of John Peel sessions, the most recent of which had been in January 2004.  The decision was taken to record it in Seattle and to have Steve Fisk, who had produced the Wedding Present LP Watusi back in 1997, work with the band.

David Gedge has since said that it was only during the studio process that he began to think that it didn’t quite feel like a Cinerama record was being made, despite the fact some of the songs contained strings and had what could be described as cinematic touches or elements. The primary instruments were guitars, bass and drums.  After a fair degree of soul-searching, and taking on board what those involved in the recording sessions had to say, the frontman made the decision to have the new album released under the name of The Wedding Present. 

My first exposure to the ‘return’ of the band after a seven-year hiatus was seeing this video on one of the music channels.

As a promo film, it’s quite mesmerising.   David Gedge is singing about driving on wide American highways as he stands on a misty single-track road somewhere in the north of England, and all the while a bare-footed woman is running frantically around London and various other localities for reasons that are wholly unknown.

As a tune, with its loud/quiet/loud way of progressing and coming in at more than six minutes in length, it felt every bit as epic.  The lyrics were everything any fan could ask for

‘and yes, there was one particular glance that made me afraid that you were just seeing me as a chance of getting laid’

It was quite the comeback. 

mp3: The Wedding Present – Interstate 5

It was released as a CD single.   It sold enough copies to reach #62 in the UK charts.  It remains, to this day, one of my all-time favourite songs ever written and recorded by The Wedding Present. 

Here’s the two tracks that were offered up as b-sides:-

mp3: The Wedding Present – Bad Things
mp3: The Wedding Present – Snaphots

At this point, it’s worth mentioning that the musicians who recorded these three songs, as well as the others that would make up the new album, Take Fountain, were four-fifths of the Cinerama line-up that had been involved in the 2002 album Torino.  They would have started work in the belief that it was going to be a new Cinerama album they were recording, and there’s certainly every indication with Snapshots that the songs were a continuation of the type that David Gedge had been composing for much of the previous decade.  It’s a lovely tune.

On the other hand, Bad Things feels a wee bit of a mess.  One of those tunes that I didn’t get my head round back in 2004 and still haven’t come round to liking it twenty years on.

JC