Search for Paradise

The Wedding Present's new release, "Search For Paradise", features the three singles from last year's critically acclaimed "Take Fountain" album, plus all the B-sides, previously unreleased acoustic versions of the A-sides and a track remixed by the German pop group, Klee. It comes with a bonus DVD of videos made for the singles and the outstanding album track "Don't Touch That Dial" together with a film made for an acoustic live version of "Perfect Blue," and bonus "behind the scenes" footage.

The Wedding Present returned from an eight year hiatus in 2004. During that time, David Gedge fronted the softer, orchestral Cinerama with his long-term girlfriend Sally Murrell. Following the couple's break-up, Gedge moved to Seattle with his new girlfriend and wrote an album's worth of darker, angst-ridden songs inspired by the collapse of his fifteen year relationship. These new songs, recorded in Chicago and Seattle, sounded like they belonged to The Wedding Present, hence the reversion to the former band name.

The roaring intensity of the first single, "Interstate 5," reflected the departure from Cinerama's filmic pop sound. Backed by "Bad Thing" and the heartbreaking and soaring "Snapshots", it was released in November 2004. The Top 40 hit "I'm From Further North Than You," which followed the release of "Take Fountain" in early 2005, relates an unfulfilling relationship borne through circumstance and desire, and the eerily off-kilter Klee remix is arresting. "Ringway To Seatac," an edgy account of Gedge's departure from Manchester's Ringway Airport to Seatac Airport in Seattle, opens and closes with throbbing guitars and energetic drums, but the chorus is a slow ache. "Shivers" is a delicate male-female vocal duet with instrumentation in the style of a 40s vinyl record. The strength of the songwriting stands out in the acoustic versions of the singles.

The videos are strikingly varied. The images in "Interstate 5" echo the guitars of the song: a barely dressed woman runs relentlessly, eventually caught on the moors of a cold and wet Yorkshire by an impassive Gedge. "I'm From Further North Than You" is a quirky pop-art cartoon scattered with speech-bubble snippets containing Gedge's renowned lyrics. "Ringway To Seatac" is a stark, stylish, sophisticated band studio performance, in contrast to the shadowy, elegaic "Don't Touch That Dial" which incorporates live footage from the band's sell out concert in London last April. The DVD also boasts footage from a live acoustic version of the gorgeous love song "Perfect Blue" filmed in Amsterdam, and candid, previously unseen, outtakes.