If gossip of about Wedding Present frontman David Gedge is to be believed, the demise of Cinerama and the consequent revival of the Wedding Present was due to a falling out with Sally Murrell, his longtime girlfriend and bandmate. (Ostensibly, Cinerama's sound had "changed" so much it didn't sound like Cinerama anymore--polite way of saying that furious breakup anthems and the recounting of subsequent one-night stands didn't fit into Cinerama's dinner jacket and domestic bliss agenda; fortunately, these just happened to be the exact subjects the Wedding Present has specialized in for over 20 years.) Perhaps not coincidentally, the Wedding Present got its own start, back in 1985, after the drummer of Gedge's first outfit, the Lost Pandas, left him for the band's guitarist. It's romantic comedy with the crucial caveat that Gedge almost never thinks any of it is remotely funny.
For those keeping score, El Rey is the band's eighth album, not counting a bunch of compilations, singles, and reissues, and its second with Steve Albini, who recorded Seamonsters with the band back in 1991. Albini was, for a band whose guitars were revved way past the well-mannered C86 group-hug they were then associated with, the right guy for the job; in his own way, he probably chipped in as much as John Peel in terms of separating the band from all the other shambling, earnest, indie pop acts in England at the time. There's still nothing really like Seamonsters-- quick, skipping rhythm tracks, flurries of drums, terse, spilling builds, and total thematic unity in the vein of embattled love. 2005's Take Fountain, with its Cinerama hangover, its tentative trip back into the dating pool, was nowhere near as ferocious. El Rey, Gedge's self-described return to "lust, jealousy, betrayal, regret, obsession," and, um, "superheroes," is the band's first in a while to give the Seamonsters-era another go.
El Rey is an L.A. record of sorts, written and recorded after a sojourn there, and Gedge-- a cynical, conniving, desperate, charming, and above all unquenchable male approaching 50-- picked a funny age at which to go. There's some incomprehension. There are some lonely nights. There is a lot of temptation, more infidelity, and some exceedingly difficult conquests. "I thought women were supposed to tell you how they're feeling," Gedge says, bewildered, on "Palisades". "But you're really the most unrevealing." Whoever she is, she doesn't love him, and in some dark hour this fact results in "Model, Actress, Whatever...", an ode, it seems, to internet pornography: "When I stare at you-- OK, it's just a .jpeg: I have a few."
The virile Gedge of the early 90s might be horrified at this, but there's something entertaining (also, without a doubt, authentic) about his randy uncle frustrations. There are flashes of refinement: the anthemic, sample-and-guitar-feedback collage that begins "The Thing I Like Best About Him is His Girlfriend", for instance. And then there are the up-market descendants of Cinerama songs, arch and playful, e.g. the tambourine-heavy and feedback-free second half of the same song, a duet with bassist Terry de Castro. But mostly, it's the same old bereaved roar: "Santa Ana Winds", chugging in like a Black Sabbath track, one big ominously bassy, upward, awkward, frustrated arc that ends in infidelity, natch. Whoever she is, she's gone by "Spider-Man on Hollywood", which works a jangly guitar and a pretty backing vocal into a metaphor about seeing things-- flying saucers, shooting stars, a girl who'll stick around-- that don't exist. On whispery crooner "The Trouble with Men" Gedge agonizes about his own roving eye; over "Swingers"'s light bossa nova, Gedge stand-in de Castro accuses a girlfriend of the same, "like Bridget Bardot in ...And God Created Woman." Gedge evidently has been at the cable TV lately. "Soup", a cad's tale about a one-night stand that will not result in a phone call the next day, breaks the news via "Seinfeld": "No soup for you!"
That one's a little bit much, and for a guy who's been doing pretty much the same thing for a few decades now, syndication is probably not an idea he wants to be bringing up. El Rey has its share of surprises, mostly in the vein of its particular subject, which is the cruelty older men visit on younger women, and vice versa. But mostly it's merely another Wedding Present record: witty, randy, guitar-heavy, and not quite satisfied.
