The Wedding Present have re-recorded some of their classic songs — and laid down a couple new ones — in an acoustic but not entirely unplugged manner on new album Locked Down & Stripped Back.

The album was a silver lining on an otherwise dark cloud. “As the summer of 2020 wore on it became increasingly obvious that ‘At The Edge of The Sea’ – my annual festival in Brighton – was sadly going the way of other live music events,” says frontman David Gedge. “Following its cancellation, I decided to replace it with an ‘online’ version, presented live from my own living room and featuring home-recorded videos from many of the artists that had appeared at the festival over the years. For The Wedding Present’s contribution, we picked twelve tracks to re-work in a ‘semi-acoustic’ style, and it was fascinating to see how stripped-back arrangements brought out different aspects of the songs. The Seamonsters track ‘Blonde’ was a prime example of this, with a ‘just-two-guitars’ approach resulting in a naïve and moving interpretation.”

These new version of “Blonde,” not to mention “You Should Always Keep In Tough with Your Friends,” “Crawl,” “Granadaland,” and more all sound pretty great. This is The Wedding Present’s first album to feature new member Jon Stewart who used to be in Sleeper. Speaking of, Sleeper frontwoman Louise Wener duets with Gedge on new song “We Should Be Together.” You can listen to the whole album below.