Review Summary: The Indie distant cousins are here and now again, herer and nower still.
You have spent enough time existing in the world of indie music. You have lived for this subculture and have a pretty good comprehension of this style, its adjacent varieties, its representatives, its general possibilities and limitations. You have followed every big and up-n-coming name since the 90s. Some have remained a cult classic, some have faded into obscurity, some are still going strong, some have made a triumphant return, some have made a meandering return, some are continuously fizzling out, some are making baffling musical choices. And some are Teenage Fanclub – having done most, if not all, of these things throughout their career. You are aware of Teenage Fanclub. You even enjoyed some of their songs or even albums. But it is quite likely that you are generally not able to pinpoint their sound, their aesthetic, their identity.
I will now perform the review thingy: wHaT iS dUh TeEnAgE fAnClUb?
Teenage Fanclub are a collective of soft-spoken, soft-playing, soft-hearted, soft-indie sweethearts ripping through sound systems like feathers rip through pillows. As in, not at all, but can be prickly once in a while. Think Starflyer 59, sans all the haze. Their career start has been marked by wishy-washy 90s cliché, cartoonish even in their cutesy album covers. At its peak, their sound was the saccharine lip gloss glitz for the indie heads who did not want to have to bring earplugs to a concert. But the musical trajectory has always been marred by their attempts at being Blur. Each other record saw them venture towards a more despondent fuzzy place, ultimately ending in an uneven clash of their inherently genteel writing and a harsh mix that did not suit them at all. Looking at their first five to six album run, one can observe a stable switch in reception: decent to awful to great to mediocre to great to mediocre to awful. That was an uneven path of their own doing. But with age, one becomes wiser (or more tired).
Teenage Fanclub certainly have become wiser. The softest of their hits have become the trendsetters of sound. For them, at least. Since a few albums ago now, they have been hellbent on delivering low-energy, high-maintenance music, crooning through ageing reflectional lyrics, exchanging the syrupy sweetness of the past for a pillowy softness their age demands. Tis difficult singling out one track from the bunch as an example. They are all exemplary.
Nothing Lasts Forever breezes through its 40 minutes on one fuel tank of lukewarm Earl Gray tea, continuously reaffirming how comfortable the old boys are with the direction they are taking. Even when scuzzier guitar tones do show up, they somehow manage to mellow out into the overall lightness like an ice cube in water. “Foreign Land” opens the album on a static harmonizing of guitars misleading one to believe this to be a full-on grunge album, until the swivel of acoustics chimes in, carried by Norman Blake’s paper-thin vocals.
If ever you needed to hear what a band that lives in a village probably sounds like, here is your chance.
To the album’s credit, its many repetitive attributes often land as hypnotic. The very same “Foreign Land” ends on a refreshingly dreamy instrumental droning, so does “See the Light” what with its mild progressive tinges, and the mantric finisher “I Will Love You” to much the same effect. Additionally, Teenage Fanclub also seems particularly keen on recapturing the song-writing techniques they have heard in their youth. Think the 60s Beatles or the Kinks type of writing but coming in the age of ignoring the apocalypse. Especially “I Left a Light On” and “Self-Sedation” are direct throwbacks. One cannot really fault the band for going into these places. At this stage of their career progression, they have tried out the various stylistic directions they were most interested in. And now their limitations have imposed resigning to but the cleanest and most baby food indie music. Again, not really something once can fault.
It is a sweet spot, really. Teenage Fanclub (write in the comments whether you think they have had a dedicated teenage fanclub since at least the late 90s) have found where they are cozy and safe to explore mainly the lyrical prowess drawn from observation and experience. “It’s Alright” and “Tired of Being Alone” do not necessarily carry great depth, but the main duo Norman Blake and Ray McGinley play around with rhythm and rhyme in a careful studied manner. They are in no need of overly heady topics, existential polemics, or crisis dirges. They just want to write smart poetic reflections. Say, for example, the three-track progression of “I Left a Light On” to “See the Light” to “Back to the Light”. Normally, having three tracks titled virtually the same way on one album would have been a rather awkward oversight, but Teenage Fanclub curiously employ similar wording or reoccurring phrases and poetic motifs throughout the tracks, effectively linking them together as a part of the whole. They all talk of seeking some coveted ‘light’ stemming from or shining on them as protagonists, from a light of guidance they offer, light of guidance they receive, to finally the light of the stage uniting all in a purpose. It is a clever way of delivering a simple play on words and themes that suits their experience as song-writers and lyricists.
What Teenage Fanclub offer in their 2023 coating is far from any profound statement. It is not even an expressly necessary album for their progression, in style or in maturity. It is, simply put and lacking better words, them doing their own thing. They have found their comfort zone and have been digging themselves deeper into it for four albums now, simply putting pillowy bricks of foundation on their blanket fort-to-be. A place they eventually look back on in satisfaction and cozy up it.
