Teenage Fanclub - Shadows

The piano outro is great to mix something behind (the intro to "Tilting at windmills" fading in works well). In a live setting it did not work at all.

I'll think about my faves since 97 and get back later. I spent a very happy day a few weeks ago doing housework and playing the Fannies' albums in order, with the windows wide and the sun blazing - a good day indeed.

(I was reading an interpretation of "Accidental life" somewhere the other day that was completely contrary to what I thought it was about, but can't remember what it was now.)

i've been thinking a lot about what teenage fanclub songs are about, both as individual lyrics and in general. they often at first seem almost vanishingly vague, pleas to an undefined "you" from a place that's never more specific than "in love". at the same time and as a band, TFC articulate a singular philosophy/experiential position more clearly than almost any pop-rock band i can think of. they write songs about the question of being. they wonder constantly how one might be, find, progress and/or know. moreover, they do this from a position of withdrawn, passive, comfort-seeking near apathy. this vision has never wavered. it was there in "everything flows" and it's still there in something like half the songs on any given album.

this results in pleasant, easily relatable songs (who doesn't seek comfort and understanding?), but coupled with an almost perverse aversion to narrative specificity, the repetition threatens to become a little maddening. how many times can you insist that you <<know what you know and feel what you feel>> before this becomes tiresome even to you? there's something fascinating about dedicating decades-long songwriting careers to ideas like these, but come on...

one of the things i like best about norman's recent songwriting is that he's willing to move beyond philosophical generalities, me + you emoting, and the subjective position of the conflict-averse late sleeper. he's at least a little more likely than his partners to write songs about people and situations that seem to exist outside himself.

anyway, i don't know what "accidental life" is about exactly. it's hard not to read it as a repudiation of the apathetic "i see me seeing me and feeling stuff" character found in so many other fanclub songs. it also seems to be a companion piece to "straight and narrow", a story about someone who seems helpless to master their own decisions.

TFC, ranked:

1. Grand Prix
2. Songs from Northern Britain
3. Bandwagonesque
4. Thirteen
5. Man-Made
6. Howdy!
7. Shadows (I will admit this one hasn't really had a fair shake)

(I don't really know the pre-Bandwagon stuff.)

Show I saw two years ago was sublime/perfect. Show I saw 17 years ago I don't really remember, but I wish I did.

Interviewed Gerry Love last year and said to him a lot of his songs seemed to be located in cities, and are specifically rooted in engaging with physical surroundings. "Oh aye," he replied. "That's because I studied town planning." An answer you will rarely get from pop singers.

Here's an often missed Fanclub gem, because it was one of the new tracks on the best-of.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZKWv0eSWaTc

Fraid I'm not with you on the Blake love, contenderizer. I'm only a couple of listens into the album but "Baby Lee" and "When I Still Have Thee" both immediately struck me as overly twee, exemplified by the distance/insistent couplet on the first and the archaic pronoun for rhyming purposes on the second. "Sometimes I Don't Need to Believe in Anything" and "Shock and Awe" are the standout tracks so far - of course they are two of the richer or more upbeat tracks, I'm sure the some of the more subtle ones will reveal their charms over time.

yeah, "baby lee" is hella twee, but in an unforced and slightly tongue-in-cheek way that i quite enjoy. and i don't at all object to the use of "thee" in a song that seems intended to be a hymn (and admits as much).

"shock and awe" is one of my least favorite songs on the album. the hook doesn't catch, and i dislike the offer of passive indolence as a protest against violence. "wake me when the conflict is over" strikes me as more selfish than compelling. do like the way the organ suggests fireworks.

"sometimes i don't need to believe in anything" is great though, yeah. not sure it needs the hazy scrim of guitar fuzz over the chorus, but i've gotten used to it.

I have warmed a bit to "Baby Lee" since my rant upthread but the whole album still feels flat and the hooks still don't catch. Pretty much everything on Grand Prix and Songs from Northern Britain is like a smack to the back of the head in comparison.

Baby Lee is a hell of an earworm, i'll give it that.

"Sometimes..." is very Boo Radleys circa Giant Steps.

Baby Lee is the only song I can remember from this album. The album as a whole left me pretty lukewarm but I only listened to the whole thing two or 3 times when it came out.

it's far from their best album, and like everything they've done in the last decade-plus, it takes some time to sink in, but the rewards are definitely there.

then again, i'm not an albums person. i mean, i like album, but only for the tracks i most enjoy. i love this band, but now that i've familiarized myself with their work, i'll probably only listen to playlists of the songs i'm most interested in.

uh, "i mean, i like albums, but only for..."

My theory on TFC: They started off as a pretty rough sounding band. Their initial roughness was certainly one of their virtues -early gigs were notoriously ramshackle, drunken, hugely fun affairs. Their other strenghs were still evident - great songwriting, harmonies, guitaring, being cool etc, but somewhat buried under the rough'n'ready exterior. Seems to me that each album knocked a few rough edges because every album is slightly smoother sounding and more mellow than the previous one, which for a time allowed their other virtues to shine. But eventually there was a tipping point and their whole thing becomes really pedestrian and a bit of a drag. For me the last couple of albums are no fun anymore - too mellow, too serious and quite bland.

And fucking off for five years did them no favours.

i might agree in part, though i wouldn't push it to such a damning extreme. i genuinely like the laid-back, mature and craftsmanlike quality of their last four albums, but i do agree that their work has become somewhat spotty lately, especially on man-made and shadows. too many songs fade pleasantly off into the dusky aether without leaving a memorable trace. and when they try to "rock out" (as on man-made's "born under a good sign"), they often sound unconvincing. i quite like "slow fade", a more spirited rocker from the same album, but it's dying for a proper, j. mascis-style guitar solo. the energy dwindles when they settle for stereo panning a dull melodic progression instead of really letting it rip.

that's in large part why i mentioned my fondness for norman blake's sonwriting, which hasn't slipped an inch, imo. of the ten tracks i'd keep off the last two albums, six are by blake. mcginley's got two good-to-great songs on man-made ("nowhere" and "only with you"), while love has two on shadows ("sometimes i don't need to believe in anything" and "sweet days waiting"). what's more, i think blake's best recent songs are easily the equal of anything the band's ever done. every member of the band has done commendable work over the years, but NB is the reason i'm still interested.

I agree with you in part about Norman, he's always written those kind of broken ballads. But when you compare for example Baby Lee with one of his earlier numbers there is a noticable difference. I'm just going to cut and paste what I posted about Baby Lee two years ago in this thread: "When you compare it with IDWCOY, which has cool harmonies, a kind of broken timing, a chord change, a pretty cool guitar solo and an interesting lyric, it really seems pedestrian. Bringing in the strings halfway then some glockenspiels at the end doesn’t impress me. It’s such a cliché that I kind of disappointed in them for employing it in this way. I mean, it’s a nice song but it really sounds like the BMX Bandits, rather than the Teenage Fanclub."

I more or less put the tipping point after Howdy. After that I could no longer hear the band that they were in the beginning of their career. And that's reflected in their output too i think. 1990-2000 = 7 albums. 2001-2012 = Two albums. It's hard for me to sustain interest in a band, even one I love, where the output drops off so severely .

contenderizer, did you hear the Jonny record that came out last year on Merge? Blake + Euros Childs (of Gorky's Zygotic Mynci) teamed up for a perfectly simple pop album that I thought was a wonderful little listen.

generally agree with the "polished into a slow fade" TFC arc, though I do like "Britain" and "Grand Prix" more than the earlier roughness of "Bandwagonesque." but yeah, the last three are kind of increasingly mediocre TFC paint-by-numbers.

xpost i think we can all agree that HOWDY! is TFC's New Jersey

hmm I've never listened to Howdy or Man-Made. everything else I can pretty much put on "shuffle" and be pleasantly entertained by

i don't love Man-Made, but the first track, 'It's All In My Mind' is one of TFC's finest...

Howdy! is sorely underrated.

^ both these last two comments otm. howdy! really seems to have been unfairly ignored. though its real out-of-the-park classic (imo) is blake's "straight & narrow", everybody's working near the top of their game. it's only real sin is that it's a noticeable step down from grand prix and songs from northern britain.

edit: "though its only real, out-of-the-park classic..."

The problem with "Howdy" is the very pedestrian production. If it had a bit of roughness and / or gloss it would be regarded better. When they play the songs live they sound so much better. (Regarding the keychange on "IDWCOY", live Norman simply moves his capo up two frets, with a huge grin on his face). Maybe I am getting mellow with age but I still love their newer stuff, because their mellowness reflects mine. They don't need to go back and do what they did in the early 90s, they are different people to then. Having said that, it would be nice if they played "Alcoholiday" live. God, I'm so contrary sometimes.

Also, aren't they living in different countries now? Isn't Norman in Canada or something? Makes it harder to get together to record etc? Must have an effect on their productivity

Yes I did hear Norman lives in or (God help him) near Toronto. Wish he would do a Canadian tour in a van like everyone else does (speaking as an expat Scot living in Canada btw).

God, I'm so contrary sometimes.

Nothing contrary about that - there's no need to pretend they are the same musicians who made "A Catholic Education" but many of their best latter day tracks have the same jammy, wandering feeling as "Alcoholiday". If anything the last two albums have more in common with the feel of that song than a tightly coiled song like "IDWCOY".

this is nice, i'm kind of a sucker for records where band has sort of given up delusions that it's going to be any big deal and just settle in and make nice songs in their own style

this is better than the new real estate record

it's called craftsmanship

anyone listened to the norman blake/joe pernice thing (under the not-great moniker of new mendicants)? i should probably check it out.

baby lee is a great song

tylerw, did you listen to Jonny? I didn't think their album was as good as it could've been.

new one's good but maybe a bit behind Shadows ime. One too many dreary plodding songs but the highs are great - opening track is killer

I dunno... A bunch of Teenage Fanclub threads but none made sense to append with this information and I didn't want to start a new thread so I'm tacking this on here since it seems to be the band's most commented-upon thread...

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Welcome back, Teenage Fanclub! Endless Arcade, the legendary Scottish group’s first album since 2016’s Here, is out March 5. Pre-order today on CD, LP, and translucent pink Peak Vinyl packaged in a special die-cut jacket in the (newly relaunched) Merge shop, or wherever records are sold. The first 100 Peak Vinyl orders in our store will receive a 12” × 12” print signed by the band.

Accompanying the album announcement is Endless Arcade’s opening song “Home,” with a music video to follow tomorrow. Though the track stretches to seven minutes on the album, its coda has been saved for the record’s release day. What we are left with is an incredible display of the assured and relaxed pop that we’ve grown to admire from the group. Listen today:

Listen to & share "Home (single version)" by Teenage Fanclub now

Endless Arcade is quintessential TFC: melodies are equal parts heartwarming and heartaching, guitars chime and distort, keyboard lines mesh and spiral, harmony-coated choruses burst out like sun on a stormy day.

In the 1990s, the band crafted a magnetically heavy yet harmony-rich sound on classic albums such as Bandwagonesque and Grand Prix. This century, albums such as Shadows and Here have documented a more relaxed, less “teenage” Fanclub, reflecting the band’s stage in life and state of mind, alongside which Endless Arcade slots perfectly. The album walks a beautifully poised line between melancholic and uplifting, infused with simple truths. The importance of home, community, and hope is entwined with more bittersweet, sometimes darker thoughts of insecurity, anxiety, and loss.

Still, the title track suggests, “Don’t be afraid of this endless arcade that is life.”

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