Take Fountain

Fears that the death of veteran DJ John Peel would sound the death knell for many of the bands he vociferously championed are proved groundless by the arrival of Take Fountain, the first album in nine years from Dave Gedge’s The Wedding Present. A return to the brittle, sometimes wry indie-rock sound of yore, the brooding likes of “Mars Sparkles Down On Me” will primarily be of interest to long-time Gedge fans dissatisfied by the broadly pop lean of his presently more prolific outfit, Cinerama. Lyrically, we’re still in familiar realms – that is, love affairs, and the inevitable roads to failure that lie therein. But beyond the cigarettes-and-cardigans sound of the ’80s bedsit lurk occasionally surprising ambitions: take the horn-accompanied “Always The One”, a gloomily British take on the music of the Spaghetti Western, or “Interstate 5 (Extended Version)” – a sweeping, dramatic number that wears epic pretensions, and what’s more, neatly succeeds in pulling them off. –Louis Pattison