The Wedding Present - No Christmas
Just in case all these festive favourites were getting a little too jovial for you, here's some miserable British indie to sour the mood and remind us all how much like sucks. The Wedding Present emerged from the late 80s indie schmindie scene alongside House of Love and late-period The Fall to notch some degree of crossover success, most noticeably in 1992 when a campaign of one-a-month limited edition singles gave them a record-breaking 12 top 30 singles in the space of one calendar year. 'No Christmas' was the final release of the bunch and manages to deflate any festive cheer you might have managed to summon up prior to listening, pitching David Gedge's grim vocals against a slab of lurching indie rock that sounded completely out of place in the singles charts which made their commercial success all the more flattering. But that was back when the charts actually meant something wasn't it? These days all you need to do is kick the bucket and your entire back catalogue races back up the download charts without so much as a casual prompt. Back in the day bands had to go out and convince a nation of raincoat-clad students and miserable indie dorks to leave their bedrooms long enough to walk to Our Price and shell out for a piece of black plastic - it's a miracle these gumbies ever bothered the charts at all, let alone setting records to stick them up alongside Cliff Richard and fucking Westlife. I suppose there's a strain of misery and futility running through all of their peers that makes them somehow feel at home.
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