March 14 - 21, 1 9 9 6

THE WEDDING PRESENT: THE BOY 'N' GIRL THING

Obsession makes for fervent pop music. A tide of intensity keeps the blood boiling; when mixed with a little insanity it can result in passion. For a decade now, the Wedding Present have been the best around at writing obsessive, sometimes sardonic tongue-in-cheek, sometimes brittle realistic songs about relationships. This tunnel vision of popular music has been their bread and butter, and their classic retro drum beats, jangly guitars, and Phil Spector-influenced melodies have always been the perfect accompaniment to singer/songwriter David Gedge's girl-and-boy musings.

The Wedding Present have stuck to these themes with such dedication, you might be disconcerted to hear that their new Mini (Cooking Vinyl) is nine songs about cars. Be assured Gedge never truly abandons his favorite topics. He merely cloaks lust, love, and infidelity in automobile iconography, in the process taking his obsession to new heights and enabling the Wedding Present to make their most concise, focused album.

There's a lot of fun and humor in the way Gedge and Co. disguise their concerns. On "Convertible" Gedge sings "I'm so impartial, but I guess I'm always convertible" as his way of feigning indifference to the prospect of getting a lady into bed. But since the lady (played by singer/bassist Jane Lockey) is too wise for him, she replies in a lovely harmony, "You're just saying, but I'm afraid you're not staying/'cause I'm not as naive as you believe" while a Hammond organ hums pleasurably in the background. The band also do their serious, brittle mode about broken love on "Jet Girl," where Gedge sings, "You took off like a jet girl, somehow I knew it would happen all along/Oh, but I can bet, girl, wherever you are, you won't be landing there for long."

Look closely and the lyrics can come off as banal: "I'm leaving, what else should I do? I'm still in love with you" (from "Go, Man, Go"). But then, that's the stuff of girl/boy pop. More often than not, an old song on the radio doesn't sound as good as you remember it. (Are all those new-wave anthologies really worth playing? Does Nena's "99 Luftballoons" endure as anything but nostalgia?) The Wedding Present reinvigorate old pop without taking a nostalgia trip, as though the golden age had never ended. Criminally underplayed, and critically underrated, they make the standard themes indispensable rather than disposable. Sometimes obsession can take you a long way.

-- Felix Khalatnikov

(The Wedding Present play Mama Kin Saturday, March 16, with openers Butterglory.)