The Wedding Present – Live Review – O2 Academy, Leeds
By David Schuster, Octobert 2026
“Well, Leeds on a Saturday night,” beams David Gedge from the microphone. “It’s good to be back!” And you can tell he means it. He and the other three members of The Wedding Present have been playing up a storm. Meanwhile, with no little irony, Storm Boelo rages outside unnoticed in the heat of Leeds’ O2 Academy. Back on home turf after an extensive tour of the USA, followed by a well-deserved break, the band are playing at their peak. Much like England at Wembley. No, forget I said that, they’re much better than our national team actually.
Three songs in, it’s clear that age hasn’t slowed down the frontman’s energetic playing one bit. During the jet-fuelled instrumental section of ‘I’m Not Always So Stupid’, he and fellow guitarist Rachael Wood stand face to face, instruments almost touching. They’re egging each other on to faster and faster efforts, hands a blur over the strings. Their combined efforts create the warm, rhythmic wall of noise which characterised their first album, the phenomenally influential George Best. Crowd reaction mirrors the energy on stage, as the mosh pit surges backwards and forwards. Those frantically pogoing get left behind by the beat, as coordinated jumping gives way to random enthusiastic movement. The music dominates everything as, collectively, we become lost in the moment.
“Playful”
In the ringing silence that follows, Gedge asks sardonically if we can hear them clearly. “Turn it up!” shouts a wag from the back.
The Wedding Present’s founding member is clearly in a playful mood. Later, after a rendition of ‘Carolyn’, he suddenly asks, “Does anyone have any questions?” It’s an abrupt change of tone that prompts some amused chuckling. One brave soul pipes up, “Is it true you wrote that about (ex-drummer) Simon Smith’s girlfriend?”
“That’s a lie!” retorts the musician, smirking. “Who said that?”
“You did. In 1995!” is the response, to general laughter, both on and off stage.
“Well,” reflects the guitarist, “you must be misremembering,” before adding, “Good question though. I normally get asked what my favourite flavour of crisps is.”
The current tour celebrates the 35th anniversary of their third album, Seamonsters. It’s a record which was to be a turning point for the band, who’d cleverly realised that they needed to evolve to survive. Their first two releases had firmly typecast them as the epitome of that jangly brand of indie music that had come to be known as C86 (after the name of a compilation tape given away by NME magazine in 1986). Five years later, that same term had come to be used derogatorily by a music press keen for something new.
Seamonsters was the band’s resounding answer to this challenge. Laid down in just ten days with producer Steve Albini, it’s a much heavier and darker sound than the group’s previous work. A couple of years later, Albini would go on to do the same for Nirvana’s In Utero, frequently cited as one of the greatest records of all time, and there are some noticeable similarities of tone. For this anniversary tour, the band are playing the whole album. All the original ten tracks in order. It’s a wise decision, often ignored by artists, since a lot of effort often goes into creating the most satisfying arrangement for a release.
“Edginess”
However, this only forms the middle core of a generous twenty-two-song show. They open with a varied cluster of numbers from their extensive back catalogue, including the slow-burning ‘Don’t Touch That Dial’, the melodic tones of ‘Montreal’ and the classic shoegaze anthem ‘The Queen of Outer Space’ from the Hit Parade 2 compilation. Intriguingly, to open they chose to play a brand-new song, ‘Limbo’. It’s a fine slice of dark alt-rock, commencing with sustained guitar notes teetering on the edge of feedback, entwined with swelling waves of softly beaten cymbals from hard-working drummer Chris Hardwick. They’re joined by Stuart Hastings’ slow bassline, which provides an Americana feel to the whole track, redolent with the edginess of isolated desert gas stations late at night. Hopefully, it heralds a new album.
Highlights from Seamonsters are the aforementioned, infamous ‘Carolyn’, the melancholic Smiths-style pop of ‘Dalliance’ and, by complete contrast, the lead single ‘Lovenest’. Beforehand, Gedge describes this as the most unlikely thing ever to be a hit single, adding that it reached number 58 in the UK charts and that “anything in the top 75 counts as a hit. This was in the days when you had to go to a record store and buy it. None of this streaming nonsense!” He’s not kidding either; even the radio mix has a discordant central riff and a machine-gun drum chorus. Tonight’s live version also includes an additional instrumental section, which sounds like he and Wood are rubbing the guitar strings on the front of the stage amplifiers. Which they are. Tremendous, cataclysmic-sounding fun.
The Wedding Present never play encores, a fact which the frontman points out before the final song. “No offence to you,” he says, waving his hand at the crowd in general. “We just don’t see the point. We play the best we can, then we all leave together.” It’s a fair point, well made. So, they close the show with a trio of crackers: ‘My Favourite Dress’ from George Best, their first album; ‘Kennedy’ from Bizarro, their second. The final number is the classic ‘You Should Always Keep in Touch With Your Friends’, which nicely rounds off the night with that frantic jangly guitar sound that first made them famous. Legends.
images: David Schuster
