Exhaustive, in every sense of the word.

The Wedding Present are sort of semi has-beens. Past the apex of their commercial peak, they continue to furrow a niche into old age, bravely looking forward with new material, eschewing the retrospective set and moving ever further into their own universe. Normally compilations like this are the aural equivalent of book-keeping and doors closing : like a ‘greatest hits’ that in effect admits the commercial decline of an act to the margins of being a nostalgia act.

Occupying the middle ground between an over-exhaustive ‘best of’, a rarities box set, and a general compendium, this thorough 6CD set runs to a tiring five and a half hours and 95 songs. In every sense of the word it’s exhaustive : after the fifth hour, David Gedge’s limited range of matter-of-fact vocals and growls become almost grating when combined with a maelstrom of fuzzy, abrasive guitar that roars in your ear. And with all 12 Peel Sessions, and four full concerts, it covers, in a haphazard fashion, almost every single important song in the Wedding Present canon, and many unreleased songs, quirky covers, and obscure album tracks.

The typical template of a Weddoes song isn’t far removed from The Pixies though – quiet / loud / quiet / loud / louder – and the quintessentially English lyrics provide effective kitchen sink melodrama : the musical equivalent of “Coronation Street”, as Gedge explores the domesticity of humanity in all of it’s forms.

The bulk of the set comes from the first incarnation of the band between 1986-97 : the 2004 reformation came so close to John Peel’s death that the band’s new configuration is covered by just one session. Laid out in chronological order, the radio sessions demonstrate clearly that The Wedding Present never change and yet also, always evolve. The short fumbles of “Give My Love To Kevin” and “This Boy Can Wait” move to the larger, more ambitious scope of “Take Me”, which rolls on a seven minute wave of mad riffing to form a Spectoresque Wall Of Sound, made of buzzing guitars.1990’s fantastic “Seamonsters” is under-represented by just one session, but still proffers a brilliantly unhinged “Dalliance” amongst it’s treasures. The latter portion of the set moves to over representation : a 13 month stretch between 1995 and late 1996 provides more than a third of the set, with three complete shows from Reading, Phoenix and Leeds. The live recordings sparkle in a way that suggest that the Weddoes live were always more fearsome on record and never really captured in the studio.

Aside from that, there’s also the numerous Ukranian Sessions, where the band played a riproaring collection of Ukranian folk songs in a Wedding Present style with fire and flame and no small amount of guts, foreshadowing the kind of Genre-Blindness that bands like The White Stripes currently work towards, crossing opposite influences to create a new and unique sound.

Fans could quibble that the collection has ample space to include many of the bands numerous other BBC Sessions (there is around three hours of spare space spread across the six discs), which – aside from eschewing the title of “The Complete Peel Sessions” – are bafflingly absent. That said, overall, “The Complete Peel Sessions” is a enormous body of work that provides no shortage of value for money, covers the bands work in exhaustive and exhausting detail, provides a treasure trove of rare material, and is the nearest thing to a career spanning Greatest Hits the band have ever produced thus far. Recommended.

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