Teenage Fanclub Survey Results (next album...)

Teenage Fanclub Survey

The Results: Would most like the next album to sound like...

Jocelyn, "I grew up listening to TFC and they were one of the first bands i had seen live several times at the age of 14. Ten years later and the band is better than ever. As their music has evolved and matured so has my taste in music (and myself) so i feel connected to them, as if they were creating a personal soundtrack for my life...I associate certain songs/albums with specific memories in my life...
They have produced album after album of beautiful love songs filled with sweet catchy harmonies and clever lyrics, guitar pop gems which are timeless, classic and fresh. Their music makes me feel so happy--I can always count on them to cheer me up.
They are three times better than most bands because they have 3 outstanding singers/songwriters who come up with amazing songs. Even among the same singer, their songs have so much variety. For example, YLITPWICF, My Uptight Life, Genius Envy, and Verisimilitude are all sung/written by Raymond McGinley but they all sound like they could be from entirely different bands. The same could be said for Norm and Gerry."
Each TFC album from Grand Prix on has pretty much equal representation for the three singers so i feel it is such a treat and privelege for me to be a fan. Also, it doesn't hurt that they are wonderful live--Norman is especially cute and funny--and they are so kind and appreciative of their fans. I'm not sure if this has an effect on how much i love them but since they are not super-popular in the US, have ended up bonding with the TFC fans that i do meet because it is so rare for me to encounter them and so easy for us to share our appreciation for this band."
'Dric, "I was listening to Don't Look Back at work today when a colleague stopped to listen - she's never heard of the Fanclub before, let alone heard them perform. And when the song was thru she was lost in memories evoked of days gone by and loves once cherished and chances let slip; and she behind the haze of recollection was a mess of what was and could've beens - a feeling all of you are no doubt intimately familiar with as your Fanclub records get set on repeat each time and with each song you wish you could escape in this world intense with emotion and fraught with inherent, almost risible optimism - until you stop and think and realise that its is exactly the same world you're in, but encapsulated in 4 minute tracks stripped stark of the other bothers and worries and nuisances that paint your present life tableau - and you're left listening to music essentially wrought off your very own heart.
It's what Gerry's songs will do to a person, for he writes lyrics you would never dare to because such emotion, such plaintive pleas and exaltations and musings, are lifted right off the pulse of being at that point before the thought process, and cynicism, and what the world might think get filtered into the interpretation of what you feel. Lyrics that you would never dare to make privy to your closest friends and lover, let alone a listening public. Because, devoid of pretension and facade and the need to preserve image, all emotion pared down is the same and empathy is boundlessly universal - I would like to believe.
So you are willingly (and helplessly) drawn and swayed with his moments of optimism ("Here is a sunrise / Aint that enough") while conversely are compelled to agree with his desperately seeking laments of pointlessness ("I've got no beat in time, got no place in line"), and are uplifted by the memory and inexplicably euphoric sway of love ("she wants to be thrilled by you") inasmuch as you are crushed and left mired in melancholy ("She don't even care but I would die for her love") - you feel all this and more because you've felt it all before.
Here ends the essay :) "

himh@btinternet.com