The Wedding Present El Rey by: Liam Tracey Thu:19-Jun-08 Label: Manifesto Year: 2008 WB rating 40 out of 100

Considering The Wedding Present started making music in 1985, you can hardly call them a new band. But there’s something about their latest release El Rey that sounds like a beginning. It’s likely due to the band’s eight year hiatus between 1998 and 2006 during which time there has been a major increase in the popularity of British pop rock. El Rey might be a little too late to reintroduce The Wedding Present to a new generation of indie kids though. While the bittersweet love tales and quirky anecdotes are still smattered over every second of this album, the UK four piece are sounding more like they’re a band joining the back of the line rather than one that should already be at the front.

By the end of El Rey it is very likely that listeners will have developed a level of resentment toward singer David Gedge and his obsession with ‘love songs’. He’s giving his heart out despite already having a girlfriend on ‘Santa Ana Winds’, happily sobbing about his confusion over said girlfriend on ‘Swingers’ and showing his luck is running out with the ladies on ‘Boo Boo’. The list goes on.

Gedge is a creative lyricist and the anecdotes sprinkled throughout this album prove that his sense of humour remains. But the problem is that he won’t utilise his quirkiness to write more varying songs. Of course the argument is that bittersweet love tales are what The Wedding Present are all about, but this only works toward arguing that perhaps there is no room for them in the current market.

The transitions between gentle and powerful on El Rey will at least ensure that the music doesn’t become all one and same. The intensity of guitar riffs in ‘Model, Actress, Whatever’ juxtaposes nicely with the more gentle verses, while rock heavy conclusions that are totally unexpected during the Killers-like ‘The Trouble With Men’ and ‘Soup’ are more than welcome. The darkness of the latter track is even more noteworthy.

There are moments where The Wedding Present slip up with their musical experimentation though. The extended, bizarre introduction to the track with the best title of the record, ‘The Thing I Like Best About Him Is His Girlfriend’, seems completely unnecessary and the fact that the introduction stops before the actual body of the song begins suggests its tacked on status.

‘Spider-Man On Hollywood’ is one of the highlights of El Rey but it is also one of the lowlights. Beginning with its forceful guitar and lovable lyrics, it shortly turns to repetition and much less interesting anecdotal delivery. In a way, this track is a miniature summary of the whole album, as while El Rey is enjoyable at first, it quickly disintegrates into a lacklustre performance that everyone has heard before. For older Wedding Present fans, El Rey might take you back to the band’s best times but for everyone else this can safely be passed right over.