I bought this album months ago on cassette in amoeba records on a whim one weekday afternoon and I was blown away. the trouble with a lot of recordings from the eighties is that otherwise fantastic albums can be bogged down with cheesy, dated production quality. however, this album (production included) sounds just as fresh and vibrant today as it did when it first came out almost twenty years ago. the songs are excellent. two chords never sounded this good. some of the songs go on forever using the same basic chord structure. yet, somehow, it never gets dull. i have the feeling that if this band were to come out today instead of twenty years ago, they would be instatly popular with today's music scene. this is very original, timeless music.the wedding present were definitely one of the best bands to come outta england in the late eighties.

Wow. I listened to this for the first time in years, and I was floored by not only the sheer speed & energy, but the ahead-of-its-time use of distortion, song structures, and rhythmic sound. So many bands today owe these lads a debt of gratitude, whether they know it or not. Listen to the opening rhythm guitar of "Crushed" ...It's hard to imagine any human alive can strum a guitar that fast.... and then they keep it going! "Brassneck", of course, is a favorite, but this is one of those rare entire albums that's so good, it's almost like a greatest hits!

With the opening of Brassneck you know you're onto something special with this album. The guitar drives, the lyrics mean something and the energy pours and pours. quite literally this was an astounding record at a time when people where mourning The Smiths and The Cure looked like they could rule the world. Gedge one of the most underestimated lyricists of England (forget Gallagher instantly) and his band put so much emotion into this record I honestly believe they couldn't match it ever again. Add this to the fact that one of the classic pop songs of all times ("Kennedy") also features (it made number 2 in John Peel's Seminal Festive Fifty of 1989 - along with about 5 other of the album tracks that year) and you know you have a record on your hands.

Certainly one of the memories of the 80's - buy it and try it.

I first bought this album after seeing The Wedding Present play in Paris in 1995. I was so blown away by their great performance that they soon became my favorite band. Bizarro is one of my desert island disks for sure. Very unique guitar stylings, meaningful lyrics, and great musicianship. Great place to start on TWP but shouldn't be your final destination. Check it out.

Bizarro was the Weddoes' second proper album (after George Best, they had released Tommy, a compilation of singles and session tracks, and the unlikely Ukrainski Vistupi V Johna Peela, containing two John Peel sessions of acoustic Ukrainian folk tunes). It included the single Kennedy (number 2 in the John Peel Festive 50 that year, one of five songs from the album to be voted in) and the original version of Brassneck, which was to be remade as a single recorded for them by Steve Albini. Each of Wedding Present's albums has a distinct identity although Bizarro retains the blistering guitar of George Best, and David Gedge's lyrics continued to mine the dark pits of romantic and sexual hell and dark despair. The longest track, Take Me!, ends in an extended instrumental section but there is no soloing, just the intense, repeated accompaniment, expressing all the emotion and pent up frustration in noise to trance-like effect. Glorious.