The Wedding Present have had eighteen UK Top 40 hit singles… not bad for a band that has, from its inception, stubbornly refused to play the record industry’s game. It all started in 1985 when <a target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener" class="wixui-rich-text__text" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Gedge">David Lewis Gedge</a> boarded a National Express coach in London with 500 records packed into a pair of his mother’s suitcases and, in this fashion, delivered the band’s debut single Go Out And Get ‘Em, Boy! to a distribution company in Yorkshire. That pioneering spirit has been at the core of the band’s philosophy ever since. From George Best, “an unmitigated delight” [NME], the first full-length release on their own Reception Records onwards, the band has charted an appealing, if often eccentric, course of its very own.&nbsp;With their early releases The Wedding Present had acquired a reputation for bittersweet, breathtakingly honest love songs immersed in whirlwind guitars, so it was extraordinary that Ukrainski Vistupi V Johna Peela, with the band exploring traditional Eastern European folk music, should be their major label debut for RCA Records. “(They) carry off what is basically a bold experiment with verve” [NME]. However, this was soon followed by the more traditionally incendiary Bizarro, “simply unbeatable” [Melody Maker] which featured their first hit single Kennedy.