Teenage Fanclub - Endless Arcade

 

Teenage Fanclub are one of those bands that you're glad are there. Or at least I am. I've been with them pretty much from the start. From the moment I first heard Everything Flows back in 1990 and bought the single. They have a sound that draws openly on a grand tradition wherein they invest their own emotions and experiences to forge an experience that's both familiar and comforting. They have an honesty and sincerity that many bands would kill for but which cannot be bought. This is why they've lasted.

So where does 2021 find them. Endless Arcade, their eleventh, (by my calculations), finds them in the same, but slightly different place where they've been for much of their career. Working on the same Pop and Rock seams, (Fanclub crucially do both). Big Star, The Byrds, The Beatles, Buffalo Springfield, Neil Young & Crazy Horse and their own rich legacy. Rolling riffs, easy melodies, guitars, honest, open lyrical addresses.

I listened to Endless Arcade a week ago on the day of its release and it made little impression. I was even slightly disappointed. Now, a week later, I'm listening to it again and it makes much more sense. Unlike Dinosaur Jr. their most obvious surviving contemporaries and comparison point, Teenage Fanclub are plainly experiencing middle age here and doubt and pain are creeping in to their habitually upbeat demeanor. But their basic DNA is still  in place and continuing to come up with the goods.

It's not difficult for fans of Teenage Fanclub, and there are many, to identify reasons for the molecular shift going on in this record. Firstly, Gerry Love, one of the band's three song writers has departed, all this time down the road, to concentrate on his own project Lightships. He's inevitably a considerable loss. Love's songs have always been a fundamental component of the band's appeal. Meanwhile Norman Blake, probably the band's nominal leader to all effect and purposes has also been going through well documented marital separation.

But Teenage Fanclub and the values they represent are still here, I'm pleased to report. Euros Childs, formerly of Gorky's Zygotic Mynci has joined the core, pretty much as a replacement for Love, it has to be said, and he contributed something to their sound, the ethereal wistfulness he's known for. Meanwhile Blake and Raymond McGinley keep working away on what they're known for too. Rich, heartfelt melodicism.

So if there's sadness here, there's also renewal. I'm glad I've come round to this massively on my second listen to this and look forward to playing it a lot more over coming weeks and months. Teenage Fanclub's recipe has always been a simple one. Here they add something fresh to the mix. Unlikely to make fresh converts, Endless Arcade should satisfy devotees who have been prone to this band's specific charms from the start, As ever, looking backwards but moving forwards. Check out the sleeve. I think I'm onto something.