Mini by Wedding Present

Mini is a six-song EP that the Wedding Present put out on Cooking Vinyl in 1996, and it comes with a gimmick they pull off with a straight face: every song on it is about cars. David Gedge, the Leeds band's singer, guitarist and only constant member, was steering a lineup that then included Simon Smith, Darren Belk, Hugh Kelly and Jayne Lockey, and it slotted in between the albums Watusi and Saturnalia.

It sounds like a quick spin round the block with the windows down: terse, twitchy guitars, drums that go off like backfires and small but sticky hooks, with Gedge crooning about motors as if they were old flames. In America it came out as Mini Plus, which the Washington Post praised, and the Chicago Reader reckoned Gedge's eccentric way with a hook left even Morrissey sounding bashful.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.