Every band reforms. Unless they don’t need the money in the first place. And even then, the lure of the millions could tempt them. The old band names have a weight and a gravitas : they are assets to be deployed when the allure of the solo project and the spin-off band no longer pulls any weight. Someone makes some phone calls, and the former acrimony is soothed by the promise of a new kitchen to come back and play Brixton Academy.

So.. Is The Wedding Present (2004 version) worth anything? We’re not talking Pink Floyd. Or even The Velvet Underground. We’re talking an OK selling band that made some pretty good records twenty or so years ago then slowly faded as the inky music weeklies chased the latest fad. But given that the lineup is, in fact, merely a renamed version of the lesser-known Cinerama (David Gedge’s post-Wedding Present band) comprising the exact same line up as the final Cinerama gigs, is it really The Wedding Present, or is it a cynical rebranding like Classic Coke?

Well…. It looks, acts, and quacks like a duck, so I suppose it’s a duck. On the basis of  the music, 72.33 seconds of  timeless, could’ve-been-written-at-anytime guitar, The Wedding Present offer a sort of greatest-hits precis of some of the finest moments of their work and execute the songs with an authentic taste that offers no reinventions or reworkings. Sure, there’s some glaring omissions that make clear that The Wedding Present 2005 aren’t some mere nostalgia trip : if it was they’d play classics like “Dalliance”, “Boing”, “Come Up And See Me”, “Flying Saucer”and “Why Are You Being So Reasonable Now?”  and bafflingly, the best Wedding Present song in years “Interstate 5“ is also conspicuous by its absence.  The track listing is not designed to produce  the comforting haze of time travel of the typical reformed band that now soundtrack middle aged commuting.

But that‘s not all. This continuation of The Wedding Present - if you discount the astute/cynical renaming - is sonically an equal of the band in their heyday : this set could have been taken from the comprehensive and marvellous Peel Sessions Box Set for all the progression the band demonstrate. The new songs slot in without an quality gap into the old songs and are their equal : that good, or bad, dependent upon how you feel about the issue.

Their unique formula of grated vocals, which provide an honesty-through-limitations that immediately outpaces the pitch-perfect but anodyne technical mastery of Whitney Houston, when mixed with the Weddoes unique brand of buzz saw guitars and short, stuttered and minimalist riffing, provide what seems to be immediately a thousand times more sincere than any cynical posing, any leather jacket or Art Deco sleeve design can convey. The Wedding Present are masters of the kitchen-sink drama : every song contains a finely observed  thumbnail sketch of the emotional temperature of our often mundane lives, underwritten by a quietly bleak humour that throws the lyric into a fierce, painful contrast. And it’s a million miles more meaningful to hear an artist strain to articulate his inner monologue rather than read the phone book and make it sound like a pop opera. Of course, anyone whose heard Britney Spears music knows that your life can be a fascinating carcrash, but your music tedious, meaningless escapist drivel. There’s more art in the towering crescendo of “Suck” than many artists achieve in their entire lives.

“Shepards Bush Welcomes….” will not send the charts into a frenzy. If anything, it probably will sell respectably to the Weddoes faithful fan base a few thousand copies steadily over a few years until it is quietly deleted. Which is a shame, because the Weddoes were a band that were far more influential than most people could ever realise : like The Pixies, they may not have sold many records, but everyone who bought their records wanted to form a band. And some of those bands now nestle in YOUR record collection. It is a fine live collection from an underappreciated jewel in British music’s history.

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