IT'S THE SIGN of true friendship when you can go months or years without seeing someone, to find that when you do, nothing has changed.
Pitch perfect harmonies, hooks you could sit down and rest on for a while and lazy, mid-paced guitars upon which 27 years of camaraderie has been built.
Teenage Fanclub are the perennial underdogs, the much-loved Glaswegian survivors; happy to reside under the radar, happy to be everybody’s second favourite band and happy to tread their own path and never entertain a thought of merely ‘fitting in’.
Six years on from 2010’s ‘Shadows’ they are back with a new album and tour and it is almost like we can still enthuse about the last time we met. A friendship is built on trust and reliability; everything sounds fresh, as we remember it, and the reverie and the energy is still there and…..was it really six years?
Teenage Fanclub’s tenth album ‘Here’ was released in September with two singles ‘I’m In Love’ and ‘Thin Air’ drenched in those staple pitch perfect harmonies, hooks you could sit down and rest on for a while and lazy, mid-paced guitars upon which 27 years of camaraderie has been built. Another 12 tunes which provide that nagging feeling you have heard them before because the melodies are so effortless and durable, these being added to an armoury of songs that refuse to offend or offer anything you could possibly not like.
The three remaining founder members – Norman Blake, Gerard Love and Raymond McGinley – continue to act as the perfect democracy; sharing lead vocals, the limelight and the song writing, as they once again contribute four songs each to ‘Here’.
Taking their trademark melancholia into deeper meaning they parade their new album and bring their peerless back catalogue and ‘oh yeahs’ that never sound cheesy to Leeds University Union’s Stylus on Sunday 20 November, and £19.50 is a small price to pay when there’s so much to catch up on. Jon Howe
Teenage Fanclub, Sunday 20 November, Leeds University Union Stylus, Tickets £19.50
