#291 The Best Album of 1989, Round 1 Match #48: The Wedding Present vs. Bad Religion
Hey folks!
Today’s Best Album of 1989 match is:
#42 The Wedding Present, BIZARRO
vs.
#87 Bad Religion, NO CONTROL
To vote, follow this link to the Google Form. You will need a Google login to vote. If you can’t or won’t have one, let me know ASAP (either through this newsletter, my email [kentmbeeson@hey.com] or on the Best Album Brackets Bluesky account) and I’ll see what I can do.
We have one Designated Cheerleader today, it’s from Head Cheerleader @bsglaser.bsky.social and it’s for BIZARRO! Take it away, Brian!
My Gen X Indie Rocker Confession: I do not like The Smiths, and I have never liked The Smiths. Sure, I admired Johnny Marr's guitar sound and playing (who wouldn't?), but even before everyone figured out they didn't like Morrissey as a person, I didn't like him as a singer/lyricist.
I could keep going on about all of the many reasons The Smiths didn't and don't do it for me, but it essentially boils down to: what I wish they sounded like is The Wedding Present. And that goes double for BIZARRO.
When BIZARRO came out in 1989, The Wedding Present was a half-decade into a recording and performing career that's still going on in 2025 (minus a brief hiatus when Cinerama was a thing, but never mind). They'd started out as a singles act that almost immediately caught John Peel's ear, and BIZARRO is only their second real album, after GEORGE BEST in 1987 (TOMMY, from '88, is a singles comp). But it's also their first great album, and arguably one of the highest peaks in the band's discography.
Like their Peel-endorsed contemporaries in The Smiths, The Weddoes have a distinctive guitar sound and a singer/songwriter (David Gedge) with a particular point of view. The sound is maybe best reduced to "very fast jangle-rock" and the songs (with apologies to The Mountain Goats) to "standard bitter love songs." That sound and that POV gel together just right on BIZARRO across tracks that are often very British in their reference points but nearly universal in the feelings they describe and rock out to.
Opening track "Brassneck" is reviewing a relationship that's already over, but Gedge isn't quite willing to let it go yet. He starts by describing a post-breakup letter he sent, which certainly wasn't going to do anyone any good, and in short order the accusations are flying. The chorus goes: "Brassneck! I just decided I don't trust you anymore..." The title word is a UK term for a self-confidence that slides into shamelessness; the total breakdown of trust in the middle of a breakup is familiar to anyone anywhere who's ever fallen in love with someone they shouldn't have fallen in love with.
The rest of the songs follow along the same subject-matter track, with Gedge and fellow guitarist Peter Solowka cooking atop a galloping rhythm section. We get references to British TV shows and The Fall; accusatory kiss-offs ("And if it didn't mean a thing/And you've told him to go/And if you're as sorry as you say/Why didn't you just say no?"); a nearly 10-minute rave-up ("Take Me!") that is a blast at the band's excellent live shows; and finally the short, exhausted closer "Be Honest," which ends with, "And if we're really going to be honest/We might as well be brief."
It's worth noting that although The Wedding Present was very much a British band in 1989, the best version of BIZARRO is the US one. After recording the 10 core tracks and releasing "Kennedy" as a single, the band stopped by Steve Albini's studio to re-cut a new single version of "Brassneck" and record a few B-sides, including a prescient cover of Pavement's "Box Elder," which had only recently been released on the SLAY TRACKS EP. (Gedge & Co. don't do the song better than Pavement, but it's not worse either.) All of this stuff was included on RCA's US edition of BIZARRO, showcasing a band hitting its stride and pointing toward the next high point, the Albini-recorded SEAMONSTERS LP.
The Weddoes, which like The Fall is pretty much Gedge and whoever is in the band at any given point, have tailored their sound and approach around the edges over the years, but the core Wedding Present experience is right here on BIZARRO. Gedge probably isn't any happier than Morrissey, but he's much (MUCH) less of an asshole and, in my humble indie opinion, has the better band and better songs.
Thank you, Brian!
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Yesterday, #23 Indigo Girls, INDIGO GIRLS defeated #106 Jesus Jones, LIQUIDIZER, 100-42-4.
Thanks for all your support!
Kent