The Wedding Present: El Rey

Even more than with most indie guitar bands, the

songs David Gedge writes for The Wedding Present depend on their lyrics for

their punch. His guitar hooks are reliable enough on El Rey, the seventh all-new

studio Wedding Present album (compilations and live discs abound), and Steve

Albini engineers them vividly enough, but it's the words that fail him. For

every piquant moment like "Model, Actress, Whatever," there's a clunker like "I

thought women were supposed to tell you how they're feeling / But you're really

the most unrevealing" ("Palisades"). If anything, Gedge is too revealing. Most

of El Rey's

songs take place in West Hollywood, which he calls home, just as 2005's Take

Fountain was

more or less a Seattle album. And throughout both albums, he's

artless-verging-on-shticky, as on titles like "The Thing I Like Best About Him

Is His Girlfriend." No wonder he keeps getting dumped.