David Gedge cuts loose at the Seaport in August 2010 (photo by twi-ny/mdr)
More than a quarter-century ago, the Wedding Present anchored NME’s C86 cassette, which helped introduce the world to such British indie bands as Primal Scream and the Mighty Lemon Drops. The Wedding Present’s lineup has changed often over the years, but there has been one constant throughout: lead vocalist, guitarist, and songwriter David Gedge. In August 2010, the Wedding Present played a blistering free concert at the South Street Seaport, including a full performance of their 1989 record, Bizarro. The foursome is back in New York this week for two shows that will feature their 1991 Steve Albini–produced disc, Seamonsters, as well as tunes from their eighth studio album, the exceptional Valentina (Scopitones, March 20, 2012). The brand-new record consists of exquisite, mature, bittersweet songs of love and heartbreak, of relationships gone seriously wrong. Powered by Pepe le Moko’s loping bass, Charles Layton’s furious drumming, and Gedge and Graeme Ramsay’s guitars, the quartet pounds out the group’s trademark sound of continually changing styles and tempos, moving from punk to pop to lounge to electronic noise, sometimes within the same song.
“So now you want to apologize / Well, that comes as no surprise / ’cause I can read you / and I don’t need you,” Gedge sings with brutal honesty on “You’re Dead,” which opens the new album. “This time you went too far / I know exactly what you are / I understand you / and I can’t stand you / But how come during times like this / I still want your touch and I want your kiss / It’s insane and I can’t explain why / You’re not the one for me although / I just can’t seem to let you go,” he continues. But on the next song, “You Jane,” he spits out, “I hope you find what you’re looking for / Do you even know what that is anymore? / I hope he’s really the one who / will make all your dreams come true / But if by some unexpected chance / this doesn’t turn out to be your fairy-tale romance / Just don’t come crying to me.” We corresponded with Gedge just as the Wedding Present, who come to the Bell House on March 21 and (le) poisson rouge on March 22, was preparing for a series of shows at Austin’s SXSW festival.
twi-ny: In 2010 you played Bizarro in New York City, and now you’ll be tackling Seamonsters. What do you think of this relatively recent trend of playing older, complete albums?
David Gedge: I must admit that I wasn’t particularly fond of the idea when it was first suggested to me, but now I’m a complete convert. I think I felt that, as an artist, I should be looking forward, not back, but it really is such an interesting experience to revisit something you’ve done a while ago. It’s a brilliant opportunity for reevaluation and reinterpretation. So I think I’ve now come to the conclusion that what we’ve done in the past is just as valid as what we’re doing today. Seamonsters, especially, works very well live. It’s such an intense experience.
twi-ny: Do you envision revisiting any other earlier records in the future?
David Gedge: Whether we’ll do more, I don’t know . . . I’m not a big planner. Planning’s for architects, not rock musicians!
twi-ny: How has the Wedding Present managed to be among the only two post-Smiths, C86 bands (besides Primal Scream) that’s still around and successful?
David Gedge: Hopefully it’s because we’re good at what we do! We have attained a certain standard and try not to let people, or ourselves, down; I’m very conscious of not releasing weak material. But also I’ve tried to establish a relationship with our fans. I’m not here just to sell them products. I want people to have a lasting relationship with us . . . and I hope that doesn’t sound like marketing-speak!
twi-ny: You’re currently in the midst of playing a series of shows at SXSW. What is that experience like?
David Gedge: We’re not there yet . . . courtesy of United Airlines! Our early-morning flight to Austin is now a late-night flight to San Antonio! We have a pretty hectic schedule ahead of us because a lot of people wanted us to play at their showcases or parties. We are doing so many we had to turn some down. So it’s going to be pretty crazy.
twi-ny: Valentina is a phenomenal-sounding album. With the digital revolution, have you changed your approach to songwriting and recording?
David Gedge: Well, recording’s definitely a bit easier now with portable recording devices in the rehearsal room and sending files from studio to studio and stuff, but most of our music is still recorded on old-fashioned analogue tape, anyway. And it definitely hasn’t changed the songwriting process. That’s still just me with a pen, paper, guitar, and solitude. Oh, and a rhyming dictionary.
Experimental director Marie Losier tells a very different kind of love story in the intimate documentary The Ballad of Genesis and Lady Jaye, her debut feature-length film. In 1993, British industrial music legend Genesis P-Orridge, the founder of such highly influential groups as Psychic TV, Throbbing Gristle, and COUM Transmissions (and who changed his name from Neil Andrew Megson in 1971), married Jacqueline Mary Breyer, a nurse and singer who then changed her name to Lady Jaye Breyer P-Orridge. The two artists were so madly in love that they decided to become a single “pandrogynous” unit known as Breyer P-Orridge, undergoing various forms of plastic surgery to look more alike. Both their life and their music were influenced by the literary cut-up style developed by Brion Gysin and William S. Burroughs, but the film itself has the feel that it too was cut up and randomly put back together, resulting in a seriously flawed and fractured narrative that has fascinating individual moments that don’t form a cohesive whole. Mixing in home movies, staged reenactments, archival concert footage, voice-over narration by Genesis, and new interviews (with such friends and colleagues as Tony Conrad, Marti Domination, Lili Chopra, and Peaches), Losier never quite gets to the heart of the matter. Much of the film feels as if something’s missing, as if the director got too close to her subjects and assumed the audience can fill in certain gaps. As she says in the project’s production notes, “The film will attempt to present the incredible complexity of Genesis’ personality from many different angles, most especially my subjective point of view. From my earliest films, my feeling has been that when shooting real life subjects, my very presence changes the reality of what I am filming. Therefore, I am not a neutral participant, but one equally engaged and inspired by what is happening in front of my camera.” As personal and revealing as the film gets at times, much of it also seems forced and overly arty. The Ballad of Genesis and Lady Jaye opens tonight at Clearview Cinemas in Chelsea, with Losier and Genesis P-Orridge on hand for a Q&A following the 7:00 screening.