Description
Throughout 2022, The Wedding Presentrsquos lsquo24 Songsrsquo series saw the legendary indie band release two new tracks a month as double A sided 7rdquos, ultimately creating a muchsoughtafter box set. David Gedge has now recurated fulllength versions of all twentyfour tracks for a new compilation album that will also comprise five bonus recordings including one featuring The Wedding Presentrsquos first guitarist, Peter Solowka.lsquo24 Songsrsquo was a doff of the cap to The Wedding Presentrsquos lsquoHit Paradersquo project of 30 years previous. That series proved to be a real milestone for the band with them becoming only the secondever artist to achieve twelve Official UK Top 40 hits in a calendar year ndash at the time something that only Elvis had achievedDavid Gedge says ldquoWhen it came to compiling the lsquo24 Songsrsquo album, I decided not to sequence the tracks in chronological order. With six sides of vinyl, you have six lsquobeginningsrsquo and six lsquoendsrsquo to play with, and I felt that the opportunity to build some kind of a musical journey was too good to miss Listening back to this collection, I have to say that I genuinely believe that, for this project, The Wedding Present have recorded some of the best tracks in our history. I loved releasing the singles, but itrsquos satisfying to have them all rounded up together.rdquoldquoThe idea of releasing another collection of twentyfour tracks did initially seem quite daunting,rdquo admits David Gedge in the deluxeCD sleeve notes but, with Jon Stewart also of Sleeper having joined the band at the end of 2019 and their subsequent writing partnership flourishing, he began to feel confident that they would be able to produce a yearrsquos worth of music. And, with one of the UKrsquos most influential independent record labels by their side in Clue, a key partner to EMI North who will be distributing the record there was no looking back.
