The Wedding Present

Hitting the British pop scene in the late '80s just as the Smiths were imploding, David Gedge's band, The Wedding Present, seemed poised to pick up where Morrissey and company left off. But aside from a penchant for chiming chords and glutinously crooned melancholy, Gedge didn't share that much with the Smiths. Clever as they were, his songs were much more grounded in the visceral punch of everyday travails and heartache: Unlike Moz, Gedge obviously drank, fought, fucked and got fucked over. Perhaps because of all that, the Wedding Present never left that deep of an impression outside the insular world of indie pop, and in 1997 the group morphed into the softer, more sophisticated Cinerama. But after splitting with longtime paramour and Cinerama collaborator Sally Murrell and moving to Seattle, Gedge opened the Present back up. Take Fountainis its first new album in eight years, and if Tuesday's performance at the Bluebird is half as heavy and harrowing as the disc, it should reaffirm Gedge's position as a tuneful, timeless pop auteur.