Sometimes when you start liking things you continue liking them. This goes for many things in life. For people. For places. For seasons. For times of day. Even god forbid for some kinds of work.
I loved Teenage Fanclub straight away. Their name. Their look. The name of their record label. The way that their sound quickly transitioned from something slightly discordant to something classic and immediately recognisable, where Everthing Flowed.
I like them now when they're thirty years and more from where they started. In some ways they haven't moved very far really. Perhaps from a club for flaming groovies in Glasgow to a camping holiday for spouses and kids in the Scottish Highlands.
Nothing Lasts Forever is their thirteenth album depending on how you count them. They've already had an album called Thirteen oddly. A title inspired by an in-joke from the band early on. Given that they'd been labelled as crass Big Star plagiarists early on. Thirteen of couse is the name of a great Big Star song.
Big Star were undoubtedly cornerstones of their early sound. As were other 'B's' Byrds, Beatles, Beach Boys, Badfinger. They loved the classically crafted, easy melodies, obvious rhymes. Harmonies. Harmony.
Nothing much has changed on Nothing Lasts Forever though key and core band member Gerard Love has left. Love generally wrote my favourite Fanclub songs but strangely his departure has not proved a great loss.
Because as Love has left. Raymond McGinley has grown. McGinley I always thought, was the weakest of the three core Fanclub songwriters but he has matured with time into the equal of either Love or Norman Blake, who early on rather dominated the band visually and sonically but has been happy over the years to stand back and allow the band as an ensemble to really come into their own.
This is probably my favourite record of September this year as it reaches its end and my birthday beckons on its final day, as of course it always does. It's an Autumnal record as many of Teenage Fanclub records are. A time to hunker down and prepare yourself for the oncoming nights. The darkness. It ends wonderfully with one of their greatest songs. The seven minute love song I Will Love You, an instant classic which might bring a tear to the greatest cynic's eye. All these years down the line Teenage Fanclub remarkably, endure. They're not done yet.
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