The Wedding Present

Event Details

The Wedding Present - Bizarro 35th Anniversary Tour, Performing the album in its entirety together with other songs LIVE at Grog Shop with The Tubs.

• Date: Wednesday, May 28th
• Time: 7pm doors / 8pm show
• Age: All Ages
• Price: $25 advance / $30 day of show + $3 at the door if under 21

Tour Celebration

In 2025, The Wedding Present will play a series of concert dates in North America to commemorate the 35th anniversary of their classic major-label debut album, Bizarro. David Gedge mentions that "Bizarro was our second album, and you can hear on it how much we had learned from the experience of recording our debut, George Best." He adds, "You only have to listen to something like Bewitched to notice that there's much more in the way of texture and depth on Bizarro. We'd just improved as songwriters and arrangers, basically. It's no less frenetic a record, though!"

Album Review

Bizarro, reviewed by AllMusic, is described as follows: The Wedding Present's second proper studio album, Bizarro (RCA Records, 1989) cut down on the frenetic jangle that the band had been known for in its early days and replaced it with healthy doses of darkness and power. Adding some fuzzy, crunchy distortion to give the guitars some hefty impact, slowing the tempos down to speeds that allowed vocalist David Gedge to squeeze more heartbroken despair and bleak sarcasm out of every line, and generally upping their game in every way, the album was the fullest realization of The Wedding Present's sound yet.

Album Highlights

Leading off with the unstoppably hooky "Brassneck" which features a brilliant Gedge reading of lines that rhyme grow up and throw up, the album plays like a collection of thematically related singles. The most single-y among them is "Kennedy" which has some brilliant sing-along lyrics and an intensely dramatic guitar strum build-up that crescendos into a maelstrom of sound. The rest of the record isn’t far behind; whether it’s the sparse "What Have I Said Now?" or the slowly grinding "Bewitched", one could extract any song and it would feel like a highlight... especially the epic-length "Take Me!" which closes the album in a fury of strums, drum fills, and chugging bass that builds and builds until it seems like the song is going to levitate and take the listener right along with it. The Wedding Present didn't necessarily need to improve their already-winning template, but they did, and it pays off big time on Bizarro.

Track-listing

• Brassneck
• Crushed
• No
• Thanks
• Kennedy
• What Have I Said Now?
• Granadaland
• Bewitched
• Take Me!
• Be Honest