Angelo Badalamenti and David Lynch's "Falling,"
performed by The Wedding Present

Not many people know this, but Elvis Presley's UK record for most Top 30 singles is shared by a group from Leeds named The Wedding Present.

When the Weddoes first emerged on the British music scene in the mid-'80s, the group was largely seen as a successor to the recently split-up Smiths. And why not? A debut album populated with song titles like "Give My Love to Kevin," "Everyone Thinks He Looks Daft" and "It's What You Want That Matters" made it easy to draw parallels between effeminate softie Morrissey and the growling, laddish singer of The Wedding Present, David Gedge.

Soon Gedge and Co. signed to RCA and, following a puzzling foray into Ukrainian folk music called Ukrainski Vistupi V Johna Peela, produced a slew of brilliant singles. The widely acclaimed (in a cult sense) Bizarro and the Steve Albini-produced Seamonsters followed and the band rode its guitar buzz into the pages of the British music tabloids on more than a few occasions.

That the band carried this buzz through to the logical conclusion of besting a mark set by The King himself is testament to somebody's marketing genius. To tie Presley's record of 12 Top 30 singles, the band would release one 7" single each month of 1992. The A-side would be a new song. The B-side a cover. At the end of the year, these songs would be collected on Hit Parade 1 and Hit Parade 2.

(In a sense, the band did Elvis one better, as some of his Top 30 hits were reissues of old singles, whereas the Weddoes' were all new.)

Naturally, some brilliant covers were born out of this process. TWP excelled in its takes on Isaac Hayes' "Theme from Shaft," David Bowie's "Chant of the Ever Circling Skeletal Family" and the finale, Elton John's "Step Into Christmas."

But the real gem of the collection is the Weddoes' cover of "Falling," best known as the theme from the television show "Twin Peaks." The B-side to April's "Silver Shorts" single, "Falling" keeps the dreamy feel of Angelo Badalamenti and David Lynch's original (sung by Julee Cruise) while adding characteristic Gedge edge.

Largely a showcase of Badalamenti's keyboard playing and Cruise's angelic voice, "Falling" is reborn as a guitar-bass-drums-vocals anthem, starting off slowly with a quiet bass and guitar duet before coming to a head in a swirling, chunky crescendo of electric guitar noise, with Gedge's singing — sounding quite nice without the growl, thank you — buried deep beneath the surface noise.

The Wedding Present never quite caught on in the part of the United States located away from college campuses and indie record stores, but those in the know are aware of how, following the Hit Parade project, the group released its major label debut, Watusi, a surf record with a weak single that flopped mightily. And though the band's final projects, the shorter works Mini and Saturnalia, received mixed, somewhat positive reviews, the band split. Gedge resurfaced in Cinerama, but has yet to capture the fire of the early and middle Weddoes period.

Since the group's demise, Manifesto Records has reissued compilations of all of the group's RCA singles, which include first-rate covers of Tom Jones' "It's Not Unusual," The Velvet Underground's "She's My Best Friend" and Pavement's "Box Elder."

"Falling" represents a band at the height of its powers, poised to capture the pop world by storm, just before being snuffed out by pressures of commercial success. Surely "Twin Peaks'" tragic prom queen Laura Palmer can empathize.

— Eric Wittmershaus (ericw at flakmag dot com)