Here is one of the most sensible announcements we’ve ever come regarding a tour, and it’s about The Wedding Present‘s first ever visit to WA.
Due to an unfortunate overlap with Irish post-punk heroes The Undertones’ Perth show on Saturday, July 15, The Wedding Present have decided to move their Mojos show to Sunday, July 16.
The band apologise for any inconvenience this may cause but felt it necessary to appease fans of both bands who now have the option to see two seminal indie rock pioneers over one big weekend.
To sweeten the deal, The Wedding Present will perform their classic 1987 debut album George Best in full at this show, commemorating the record’s 30th anniversary. This will be the last time George Best will ever be played by The Wedding Present in Australia.
Current ticket holders for The Wedding Present’s Saturday Mojos show can now use their ticket for the Sunday night or claim a full refund at Oztix.
Having formed in Leeds in 1985 around the lovelorn songwriting of David Gedge, The Wedding Present band soon acquired a reputation for bittersweet, breathtakingly honest songs of heartache immersed in whirlwind guitars — a jangly-yet-brawny sound, played at impossibly breakneck speeds, that was introduced to the world on their debut LP George Best.
NME called the album “an unmitigated delight” and subsequently invited The Wedding Present to contribute a track to the magazine’s C86 compilation — a cassette release that has remained hugely influential upon generations of noisy indie rock bands.
“The boy Gedge has written some of the best love songs of the ‘Rock ‘n’ Roll’ era. You may dispute this but I’m right and you’re wrong!” – John Peel
Over the course of the next three decades the band would find themselves exploring all kinds of sharp left turns like trying their hand at traditional Eastern European folk music on the album Ukrainski Vistupi V Johna Peela, enlisting the aid of the noise-mongering (and, at that point, relatively unknown) sound engineer Steve Albini for their 1991 album Seamonsters, and the time they released twelve 7” singles, one per month for a whole year — an experiment that paid off when they equaled Elvis Presley’s 35-year-old record for “most hits in one year”!
Today, The Wedding Present can be found at the top of their game — their 2016 album Going, Going… having been described as their masterpiece. AllMusic says “It’s hard to deny the brilliance of a band that can crank out an album as passionate, hook-filled and flat-out fiery as this.”
The Wedding Present play Mojos Bar on Sunday, July 16, with support from Dream Rimmy and Rinehearts.
