himh@btinternet.com
A wise man once said, "A life without Teenage Fanclub is a life not worth living." Well, perhaps that's a bit of an exaggeration, but as one of Scotland's top exports, the group certainly does give the pop fans of the world a raison d'être. Packed with trademark TFC multi-part harmonies and unforgettable choruses, Howdy - brought to U.S. shores after a year of limbo that made longtime followers go through some serious withdrawal - is another finely crafted release in the band's oeuvre. Plentiful Hammond and harmonica propel the sugar rush that is "Happiness," while keyboards, bells and horns make for a heart-melting mix on "The Town And The City." Glittering harmonies from Norman Blake and Co. soothe like a Hawaiian sunset on "I Need Direction," which fits nicely alongside the spot-on opener from 1995's excellent (naysayers, be damned) Grand Prix, "About You." Once again, Teenage Fanclub proves its songwriting muscle is among the finest in modern music; astonishing, considering that the band survived the '90s alt-rock machine and early hype to consistently produce some of the last decade's finest releases. Wicked good without a lick of cynicism, Howdy is a fine way to start 2002.
- Kristy Martin (CMJ New Music Report Issue 747 - Jan 28, 2002)
Songs From Northern Britain
It's a welcome relief to come across an album concerned with nothing more than playing some rather lovely songs in a
rather lovely way....in a world where you're only as good as your last chorus,
Teenage Fanclub are rarely less than Very Good Indeed.
- Melody Maker (19 July 97)
Grand Prix
Anyone justly fearing that Norman Blake's new beard speaks of profound inner turmoil need only listen to the first minute
of About You to be assured that not only are the Fannies back but that they are back with the record of their lives.
Over their last two excellent albums, Bandwagonesque and Thirteen, the band have honed a particularly agreeable sound,
chimingly melodic guitar rock replete with history but thoroughly modern. Grand Prix is the apogee of this style.
There is wit, energy, passion and on songs like I'll Make It Clear, Neil Jung and Discolite, there are huge,
headswimming choruses rooted on the band's craftsmen's knowledge of harmony and chord work.
Furthermore, air guitarists will barely be able to sit still throughout. Cynics will talk of curatorship and retro-obsessions
but saner folk will simply revel in the abundant tunefulness, zest and melancholy.
- Stuart Maconie of Q Magazine (July 95)
Everything Flows is my favourite song of theirs but the album (A Catholic Education) is a bit ropey.
I wouldn't say this is one of the greatest albums ever but I never stop playing it.
It's got incredible warmth and makes me feel fantastic. I think it'll eventually be seen as the Sweetheart Of The Rodeo
of its day. Totally underrated. No one talks about them, but everyone loves Teenage Fanclub.
I also love the fact you can talk about Gerry's pop songs - Don't Look Back is great - Raymond's idiosyncratic songs
-Verisimilitude is genius - and then Norman, who is probably more stoner but heartfelt. I can't say who's my favourite,
I know them!
- Bernard Butler
For all of the brilliance of records like Bandwagonesque and the underrated Thirteen, at times Teenage Fanclub
seemed little more than a showcase for the laconic melodic genius of Norman Blake -- fairly or not,
the songwriting contributions of bandmates Gerard Love and Raymond McGinley suffered mightily by comparison,
mere filler when stacked alongside Blake-penned marvels like "The Concept" and "Norman 3." That said, the superb Grand Prix is perhaps the truest group effort in the Fannies' catalog -- more than ever before, their democratic approach truly bears fruit, and it's indicative of the disc's uniform excellence that the first Blake composition, the lovely "Mellow Doubt," doesn't even surface until track three, by which time McGinley's "About You" and Love's harmony-rich "Sparky's Dream" have already firmly established the set's ragged-but-right tenor. While new drummer Paul Quinn fails to recreate the buoyantly reckless abandon of the sacked Brendan O'Hare, Grand Prix otherwise captures complete creative synergy -- in particular, "Don't Look Back" is Love's watershed moment, a gorgeously wistful love song highlighted by wittily lovelorn lyrics like "I'd steal a car to drive you home," as good a pick-up line as anything in the annals of rock & roll. Not everything works (McGinley's "Verisimilitude" goes nowhere fast) and Blake's contributions are still the highlights ("Neil Jung" and "I'll Make It Clear" are simply perfect pop songs),
but Grand Prix is ultimately the product of a band at the peak of its collective powers,
not as much a landmark as Bandwagonesque but every bit as good on its own terms.
- Jason Ankeny
Bandwagonesque
Much more developed than their patchily brilliant debut, Bandwagonesque establishes Glasgow's TFC as a first-rate guitar-pop band in the classic tradition, and in that tradition, it's only fitting that a band able to write such breathtaking pop songs would be smart-ass enough to: a) drop Rasperries, Big Star/Chris Bell, Beach Boys and Badfinger quotes in the first ten minutes of the album; b) sandwich a feedback-laden Dinosauran riff romp called "Satan" in between two of the year's most spinetingling guitar-pop moments; c) make lots of silly lyrical references to bad metal bands (and write an entire song about them); d) have a bag of money as the album cover of their major-label debut (shades of Nirvana or what?); e) close the album with a song that could have been a hugh "dance crossover" hit if they'd bothered to add vocals. That they've done all of the above and still created one of this year's greatest albums is ample testimony to the power of TFC's harmonies and distorto-jangle guitars. Sheer gorgeousity: "The Concept," "What You Do To Me," "December," "Alcoholiday" and especially "Star Sign."
- CMJ New Music Report Issue 260 - Nov 15, 1991
The gold standard of the early-1990s power pop revival, in its own way Bandwagoneque was as a much a benchmark as
contemporary records like Nevermind and Loveless; though not the generational rallying cry of the former nor the
revolutionary sonic breakthrough of the latter, Teenage Fanclub’s sophomore album nevertheless heralded the return of
melody and craft, coupled with energy and spirit -- hallmarks of much of the greatest rock and roll of the past,
and virtues as rare as hen’s teeth in the years immediately prior to the disc’s release. Although its incandescent harmonies,
lazily immediate songs and crunching guitars earned it endless comparisons to vintage Big Star,
Bandwagonesque is in every way a product of its own time -- the thick, grungy sound of the Fannies’ debut
A Catholic Education remains intact for gems like "What You Do to Me" (arguably the most brilliantly simpleminded
love song ever penned) and the instrumental "Satan," while the lyrics of other standout moments like
"Star Sign" and "Alcoholiday" reflect a laissez-faire irony and unassuming genius even more emblematic of the
moment in question.
- Jason Ankeny
Creation boss Alan McGee's latest rapscallion ruse to lighten the pockets of the record-buying public is a bunch of
hirsute Glaswegians with a reputation for storming live shows and a penchant for genteel melodies and feedback-strafed
electric guitars. The self-styled Teenage Fannies have mockingly sidestepped the inevitable accusations of plundering rock's
dog-eared back pages with the nod's as good as a wink LP title, and whilst there is little doubt that TFC have quaffed long
and heartily from the fulsome musical goblets of Lennon and McCartney, Neil Young, Roger McGuinn and sundry American guitar
delinquents, they are close to arriving at a sound that is recognisably all their own. Introduced by an awesome barrage of
feedback and the deadpan couplet "She wears denim wherever she goes, says she's gonna get some records by the Status Quo",
the opening song, The Concept, is a thrilling induction into TFC's melodious grunge guitar free-for-all. Operating in a parallel universe to the blips, bleeps and chemically assisted nirvana of the still raving indie dance scene, TFC have remodelled the whiplash guitar of Jesus And Mary Chain, grafted on their own softly shimmering vocal harmonies and replaced a black-hearted cynicism with a life-affirming brio and some sorely needed humour. Cocking a snook at those who dissect slivers of plastic in search of coded entreaties to teenage devil worship, Satan is a murderous 80-second wind-up of orchestrated chaos and guitar savagery, with enough garbled vocals to keep the moral majority on overtime until Christmas. Cold compresses are applied to fevered brows on songs like December, Guiding Star and Sidewinder, as TFC slip into an altogether mellower groove with Norman Blake's understated lightweight vocals wafting along on clouds of multi-tracked harmonies and eardrum-fondling melodies. Metal Baby drags a turbo-charged take on glam rock kicking and screaming into the 1990s, Alcoholiday is a loping singalong shuffle and
What You Do To Me descends upon a classically Beatlesque melody with the untrammelled gusto of a runaway train on a
collision course with an ammunition dump. The obligatory instrumental Is This Music? rounds things off with a celebratory
flourish - Motown drumbeats, Rolf Harris-style wibble wobble bass lines and canoodling cross-cutting lead guitars soaring
off on the back of a head-spinningly timeless melodic hook. The sound of pop eating itself it may very well be, but with an
aftertaste as good as this, it would be churlish to quibble about the choice of ingredients.
4/5
- Paul Davies, Q Magazine (Dec 1991)
Teenage Fanclub Live
Sadly the Fannies never made the leap into mainstream consciousness that their music merited. Tonight’s performance is therefore for the faithful only, and they’re rewarded with a greatest hits set deserving a mention in the Queen’s New Year’s Honours List.
You see, Norman Blake, Gerry Love and Ray McGinley, free from the glare of tabloid attention, have spent the last twelve years perfecting the art of harmonious melancholy. Time well spent I reckon, as songs like ‘Start Again’, ‘About You’ and ‘Take The Long Way Round’ are songs to fall in love to. Ask Travis, they’ll tell you.
Great as all these are (and there’s not a duff one all night), special mention must go to ‘Accidental Life’ - a hidden gem from the ‘Howdy’ album - and an epic closing rendition of debut single ‘Everything Flows’. But for a really memorable moment you simply cannot beat ‘Sparky’s Dream’. Mathematically proven to be the greatest song ever written, grown men were openly weeping. I’m telling you man, it was beautiful.
Robert Collins, Official Reading Festival Website
Actually that isn't what happens at all. What happens is the Fannies renege on their promise to play the last of this three-night London residency sans guitars. Instead, they plug in and play things old and things new and, in all honesty, it's infinitely preferable to what might have been.
The capacity crowd collectively swoon as 'The Concept' follows 'I Need Direction' and serve a telling reminder that this band has been responsible for some of the most immaculately crafted tunes of these times.
For an encore, they pick up mandolin, marimbas and trumpet, in a belated attempt to enter into something of the original spirit of the gig. It matters not, though. Sometimes the wheel just doesn't need to be reinvented.
- Simon P Ward, dotmusic
Of course, Gallagher said that to just about anyone who could put a few chords together and happened to be in his immediate vicinity. Sometimes, though, he inadvertently hit the nail right on the head.
After all that Oasis have been through, who knows where that leaves Teenage Fanclub? If you quickly visualise a very tall hill, glorious green pastures set against a magnificent sky, with the everyday figures of Norman Blake, Gerry Love and Raymond McGinley perched on top, strumming away as if nothing else mattered, looking contentedly towards the heavens, then you're pretty much there. Success has always beckoned for them, but maybe right now, when everyone's let their guard down, it's a real possibility.
It's a fresh start pinched from the jaws of obsolescence. As Creation collapsed around the recording of new album 'Howdy', things were looking shaky. Lacking a label, and subsequently losing a member, you'd have forgiven them for giving up. Having found a new label, and retrieved an old drummer to replace the one they mislaid, it's easy to see why they didn't.
It's just so wonderfully vibrant. Under a luminous blue backdrop, yellow light piercing through like rays of sunlight, 'Near You' is the first illustration of just how wonderfully refreshing four minutes of abstract harmonies can be, dazzling and inviting in equal measure. It's all unashamedly upbeat, a playful streak that rears its pretty little head during 'Your Love Is The Place Where I Come From', as Norman knocks out a cheeky, and entirely unexpected, little rhythm on a handy set on bongos, before glancing guiltily at the front few rows.
There's a definite spark here that spreads happily to older material, much seeming completely revitalised. Straight out of Rock City comes 'Radio', lyrics pleading with the crowd to "justify the reason behind your smile". Quite frankly, it's difficult to put into words.
Watching Teenage Fanclub is a positively wholesome experience, each song a little musical fairytale, filled with theoretical settings and seemingly innocent ideals, washing over the audience and leaving what can only be described as a post-coital glow. On this evidence, Teenage Fanclub sit quite happily alongside the likes of Lou Barlow, Elliott Smith and Gorky's Zygotic Mynci, rendering any Travis comparisons entirely redundant.
Best band in the world then? Not quite, but perhaps Liam Gallagher's slightly more perceptive than he looks.
- Aaron Scullion, dotmusic