« silver surfers | Main | readymade fm »

i might've been a bit rude, i wrote it in a bad mood

I spotted re-releases of The Wedding Present's Bizarro and Seamonsters in JB Hi Fi with original covers but heaps of bonus tracks (moreso than the original bonus track releases all those years ago). If you don't have either of these, get thee to a nunnery (or a CD shop) right now.

Bizarro features David Gedge at his sneering best on tracks like Brassneck (the better, louder version they released as a single is one of the bonus tracks), and Be Honest - I don't think I'll ever forget the way he spits out the end of the line:

"and if we're really, really going to be honest
we might as well be brief."

This was also the last album where they really did that loud, fast jangly guitar thing (eg. Take Me) that was their signature sound in the early days, and Bewitched marks the more brooding nature of songs that came to the forefront on Seamonsters, a pile of one-word-titled songs that ache more than any of their previous material. He'd had the words before, but the music didn't match them as well as it did on tracks like Dalliance, that builds up from a tiny jangle into a full-on cacophony by the end of the song. The first bonus track Niagara ruins the mood with its upbeat-ness, but it's still one of their better tracks (heard separately!).

(they also get bonus points from me for doing a nice instrumental track called Dan Dare.)

* 09:13 * music