 by Rob van Alstyne
Roughly a dozen years ago Teenage Fanclub was tagged for stardom. Spin hailed their sophomore record Bandwagonesque as 1991’s best (above Nevermind) and the Fannies were appearing on Saturday Night Live. Could it really be that a group of Scottish lads schooled in the teachings of power-pop goodness would finally capture the fame that had eluded the likes of their American forebears like Big Star, the dBs and Tommy Keene? Somewhat predictably for those who know their power-pop history, the temporary spotlight proved to be misleading as the Fanclub returned with a “difficult” follow-up album (1993’s Thirteen) and gradually slowed the pace of their releases and stateside appearances.
Download an mp3 of Teenage Fanclub’s song “It’s All in My Mind.”
 Thankfully,
this lack of attention has had little impact upon the songwriting trio of Raymond
McGinley, Gerard Love and Norman Blake. The three, who split lead vocal duties
evenly, have remained content to crank out their breezy and always deliciously
hook-laden pop with unerring acuity for whomever cares to listen. Sure, the
placid and slightly more acoustic leanings of 1997’s Songs from Northern
Britain feel a bit removed from the brash semi-grunge of Thirteen,
but the basic core of hummable melodies, genial voices and pleasantly chiming
guitars is still present in every Fanclub creation. So even though it comes
after the longest fallow period they’ve ever had between proper albums—five
years—Man-Made doesn’t attempt to reinvent the Fanclub’s
musical wheel. If something’s been spinning as smoothly as these lads’
melodic wheels for the last 17 years, why change anything?
“It’s strange because looking at what years the records have come
out it does look kind of sparse lately,” admits vocalist/guitarist McGinley
in a thick Scottish brogue via telephone from his Glasgow home, “but it’s
felt like we’ve been pretty busy doing something the whole time. Earlier
on in the life of the band we tried to do things quickly and then were always
frustrated when things didn’t come together as fast as we had hoped. I
think now we’ve sort of realized there’s no point in setting yourself
up to get disappointed all the time and just sort of let things happen at their
own pace.”
This relaxed working pace is reflected in Man-Made’s mellow groove;
it’s the least rocking album the outfit’s released in their 17-year
tenure—buzz saw guitars only turn up for brief cameos on a few tracks—while
still replete with plenty of sparkling melodies. With the guitars largely de-fanged
the songs find their power in the harmonizing of McGinley, Blake and Love’s
voices.  If
this is all starting to sound a little too Crosby, Stills & Nash-y to you
fret not: there’s just the right amount of sharp left turns (the out-of-nowhere-fret-freak-fest
of the Love penned “Born Under a Good Sign”) and moodier set pieces
(McGinley’s loping and slightly icy toast to monogamy “Only With
You”) to darken the otherwise endless summer of pleasant pop on display.
With three equally-talented songwriters sharing the same band one would think
that the collaborative process would run the risk of devolving into an endless
tug of war fraught with constant ego-driven temper tantrums. According to McGinley
nothing could be further from the truth for this band of childhood friends turned
bandmates.
“The band has certainly never been about one person’s thing. I don’t
think any of us would try to drag the Teenage Fanclub thing on if one of us
left; I think that would pretty much be it. There are different levels of collaboration
that happen, but the songwriting process is pretty solitary. Someone will come
in with a chord sequence and a melody at the ready. Each song is pretty much
written and directed according to one person’s ideas. Then we figure it
all out together what the recorded version of the song will be. It’s not
the kind of thing where one of us would go, ‘Why don’t you change
the words to this in the second verse?’ The collaboration comes more in
terms of arrangements and adding a guitar part or what time the drums come in.”
 This
hands-off musical symbiosis is hard to argue with when looking at the results,
the highlights of which were recently compiled on the 2003 anthology Four
Thousand Seven Hundred and Sixty-Six Seconds: A Short Cut to Teenage Fanclub.
Nearly two decades on from the journey they began, having weathered all the
storms that naturally come with such a lengthy tenure, Teenage Fanclub now find
themselves in the enviable position of elder statesmen, frequently cited by
up and coming bands as a source of inspiration. It’s not something McGinley
permits himself to think about too often—he’s still too busy living
in the Fanclub’s plenty exciting present.
“Time passes and you kind of don’t really notice it, you know?”
claims McGinley while reflecting on Teenage Fanclub’s legacy as our conversation
comes to a close. “If we’re amongst ourselves doing whatever it
is that we’re doing as a band and musicians and songwriters, any thoughts
of any kind of legacy we might have or influence we might be on other bands
couldn’t be further from our minds. I’m definitely really proud
of what we’ve done over the years, but it’s not something I really
think about. We’ve been around for a long time and people have been fairly
complimentary of what we do, but I think if you allow yourself to become conscious
of other people’s perceptions of what you do it’s hard to keep actually
doing it.” ||
Teenage Fanclub perform Fri. July 29 at First Avenue with The Rosebuds.
6 p.m. 21+. $15. 701 First Ave. N., Mpls. 612-332-1775 .
Find out more about Teenage Fanclub on their official
website at TeenageFanclub.com.
Head
on over to our mp3 page to download hundreds of tunes, including Teenage
Fanclub’s song “It’s
All in My Mind.”
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