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since his band the wedding Present disbanded and David Gedge began looking back to the James Bond film soundtracks of his youth for inspiration, the music he creates in Cinerama has grown more sophisticated. Not only has the number of extra players been increasing, but the complexity of Gedge’s arrangements and his production values have been stepped up, too.
But there’s been a sudden turn.
Instead of moving further away from the shambling pop-punk aesthetic of the Wedding Present, Cinerama’s recent concerts have featured Gedge’s familiar guitar jangle much more prominently.
Listening to Cinerama’s cleverly titled new album, The John Peel Sessions (Manifesto), a collection of their live-in-the-studio performances on Peel’s popular BBC Radio One program, it’s tempting to say that without the lilting voice of Sally Murrell, all the disc’s love-gone-horribly-wrong songs could pass as forgotten Wedding Present B-sides.
For just about anyone else making grandly orchestrated mini-epics inspired by John Barry, the “one take, no overdubbing” guidelines of a Peel recording session would be prohibitive.
But Gedge has never been known to decline an invitation from Peel. Since 86, he’s logged 11 Peel Sessions with the Wedding Present before the two Cinerama sets that make up the new album. Last Sunday’s return engagement to perform four new compositions makes a staggering 14 appearances in total.
Only the Fall and Ivor Cutler have done more Peel Sessions. At least that’s what Gedge says, and he should know. When Peel staged a celebrity trivia quiz show based on the program, he asked Gedge to dream up the skill-testing questions.
It makes you wonder if there’s something more to this cozy relationship, but Gedge insists there are no embarrassing photographs involved and offers a plausible explanation for his most-favoured-musician status.
“It’s kind of a weird thing, really,” Gedge ponders from his London home. “Peel started doing his program on Radio One in 67, playing only what he thought was good, and he’s one of the few DJs who’s still doing that today.
“I grew up listening to his show, so my taste in music was greatly influenced by his taste. It’s possible, then, that I’m making music he likes for that very reason.
“It’s more important to me that Peel likes my records than if they’re hits. When I hear that he’s played one of my records, I think, “Yes! I’ve done something good!’ On the day he says something I’ve done is shit, I suppose I’d be very hurt, because I know he’d mean it. That’s a bit sad, isn’t it? But there you go.”
Our boy Gedge is familiar enough with Peel Sessions history to know what works and what doesn’t. He’s one of the few artists to consistently fight off the urge to use the platform to simply hype the new single.
Instead, Gedge prefers to take advantage of the free studio time to try something unusual and mess with preconceptions, as in the Wedding Present’s famous Ukrainian reconstruction of the Smiths’ back catalogue.
“The idea of going on and just playing the new single or a tune for which the band is already known is a cop-out. I wouldn’t do a Session unless we were trying something different.
“More than just new material, we’ll take a whole different approach, like bringing in string and horn players, or maybe attempting an odd cover. We did the Carpenters’ Yesterday Once More, and it worked so well, we re-recorded the tune for a single B-side.”
As with Cinerama’s previous North American tours, they’ll be making an extended stopover in Chicago to cut the basic tracks for their forthcoming album with Steve Albini.
It’s too early in the process to guess where they might go next, but last week’s Peel Sessions airing of new compositions Superman, Get Smart, Quick Before It Melts and Health And Efficiency — a reference to the, er, naturalist magazine — shows Gedge hasn’t given up drawing on his childhood experiences.
Also, the recent Cinerama set list addition of the Wedding Present tunes Bewitched, Crawl and Suck is a further indication that Gedge isn’t prepared to completely dissociate himself from his slash ‘n’ bash past.
“The stuff we’ve been doing has been getting a bit louder — it’s almost like Cinerama doing the Wedding Present,” he chuckles, “but I don’t think I’m ready to move on from the soundtrack thing just yet.
“We’ve done the light, pop-y sort of film score stuff, but there’s still a lot of room to move into areas that are darker and heavier. We’ll see.”
timp@nowtoronto.com
