The Wedding Present – Take Fountain

Comes with MP3 download emailed directly after purchase. In 2004, Gedge and his associates began recording the fourth Cinerama album with Watusi producer Steve Fisk and resurfaced instead with the sixth Wedding Present album. To no surprise, Take Fountain sounds just like Cinerama and the Wedding Present. Opener Interstate 5 gets it across right off the bat, its first six minutes an effectively repetitive chugging groove that shifts into a drifting hybrid of Ennio Morricone and John Barry for the final two minutes — a bracing zip up the West Coast turns into a restful gondola ride alongside an Italian village. From then on, the album is populated by a range of three- to four-minute pop songs that you’re accustomed to hearing from Gedge. For every hushed, playful passage, there’s an explosive chorus, and for every verse dealing with some form of romantic frustration, there’s…a bunch of romantically frustrated verses. Most songs are of the standard that made Gedge one of the most loved indie figures of the ’80s and ’90s, though the bluntly sexual phrasings that repelled George Best/Tommy-era fans from Watusi, Saturnalia, and everything released by Cinerama remain.