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Wedlock is an electronic indie synth pop outfit formed in Richmond, Virginia circa 2004 by Paul Allgood and Jeff Hathaway. Despite constantly shifting personnel around Allgood, I wasn’t deterred from reviewing their second album Continuity:
“On Continuity, Wedlock’s regular explorations into a revamped synth pop world for the 21st century continue in engaging fashion. If anything, there’s a knowledge of how things can go in complete cycles — when Paul Allgood sings “I’ll rather die that give you control” on “Emotional Ghost,” it’s an obvious reference to Nine Inch Nails, but where Trent Reznor amped up Depeche Mode’s emotional violence to loud-as-hell levels, Wedlock returns to a calmer gentility here and elsewhere. Songs like “Big Mistake,” being almost a peppy jazz-pop number more than anything else, right down to the prominent piano, and the opening “Blameless?,” starting the album on a slower, moody, and somewhat threatening tip, show that it’s perfectly easy to let understated arrangements still hit plenty hard even after everything else that’s happened in the general field. More immediate songs like “Addition by Subtraction” and “Witnesses” add a bit of aggressive snarl to things, but always in controlled fashion, while “World Machine (Universal)” nods a bit toward dancehall and “Queen for a Day” has a bit of recent R&B moves about it in turn, something engagingly slinky. Meanwhile, “Easy Weekend?” rocks the synth guitar as well as layered vocals on the break, a nicely done effort.”
To the best of my knowledge, the band went on hiatus, and then started recording again albeit with another cast of musical characters.
Ned Raggett.
