Teenage Fanclub
w/the Rosebuds
Wed Aug 3, Neumo’s, 9:30 pm, $15 adv/$17 DOS, 21+.
FOR A BRIEF period in the early 1990s, Teenage Fanclub were poised to be the biggest band on Earth. The Scottish quartet’s luscious, harmony-laden single, “The Concept,” was in rotation on MTV. Their power-pop classic, Bandwagonesque, was named the best album of 1991—over Nirvana’s Nevermind and My Bloody Valentine’s Loveless—by SPIN magazine. They played Saturday Night Live, toured with Cobain and company… and then…
“It didn’t quite happen, did it?” chuckles singer-guitarist Norman Blake. But no matter. The band continues to make great records, including their latest, Man-Made, and play around the globe. “To still be touring America after 15 years, and then going to Japan and Australia after that? We’re very happy with our position in the world.”
Blake attributes the band’s longevity, and the consistent quality of their output, to having not one, but three, primary songwriters: Blake, Gerard Love, and Raymond McGinley. “For one person to come up with a whole album’s worth of material—and do it well—is quite a feat,” he notes. “In our case, there are three of us, and we can focus on four or five songs apiece per album, so hopefully it makes the overall result better.”
Although Man-Made is still audibly the product of four Beatles-and-Big-Star-loving pop-rock classicists, the new disc (recorded in Chicago with Tortoise’s John McEntire) showcases leaner, sparser arrangements. “On our last couple albums, we’ve had songs with 20 vocal tracks and eight guitar overdubs. This time, we thought, let’s try and strip it all back to the bare essentials. Instead of five vocal tracks, let’s stop at two, so we can perform everything live.”
And while he only wrote 4 out of the album’s 12 cuts, Blake did notice a recurring lyrical theme: “A strange fixation with mortality. I’m going to be 40 this year, so maybe it’s something to do with that. Then again, we tend to write our lyrics when we’re in the studio, and we recorded much of the album in the Chicago winter, looking at ominous clouds overhead and six-foot snowdrifts everyday, so maybe that explains the mortality fixation.”
