Teenage Fanclub



         


Teenage Fanclub is a British pop-rock band from Glasgow, Scotland, founded in 1989. Their sound can be characterised by swirling guitars and strong vocal harmonies.

Song-writing duties were shared between the three permenant members of the group: Norman Blake, Raymond McGinley, and Gerard Love, but there have been a succession of other members including Brendan O?Hare, Francis Macdonald, Finlay Macdonald and Paul Quinn.

For anybody interested in the music of sixties west coast bands like the Beach Boys and Byrds, and their seventies counterparts Big Star, Teenage Fanclub are the essential contemporary equivalent. Born from Glasgow's charmingly low-budget C86 scene just as grunge exploded, Teenage Fanclub started out as a noisy, chaotic band, as can be heard in A Catholic Education. From this album, only Everything Flows is an essential song, though the album as a whole represents an interesting mix of harmony and dischord. Follow up The King is widely panned, and probably for good reason. It was Bandwagonesque, with its more deliberate song construction, that brought TFC commercial success - the hooks became stronger, the guitar riffs were brought under control and the vocals took shape. Thirteen was almost identical in style, and remains the most under-rated of Teenage Fanclub's albums. Grand Prix, meanwhile, is perhaps the high water-mark of the Britpop scene which it found itself in. Songs such as Sparky's Dream, Neil Jung and Going Places approached perfection, without being complicated affairs.

Songs From Northern Britain is a sedate, glowing album, to be listened to only by those who have been in love. It marked a move towards an acoustic sound which would be expanded on for Howdy, the bands most recent full album. A recent compilation, 4766 Seconds - A Shortcut to Teenage Fanclub, attempted to collect together the best bits of these albums. No easy task, given the strength of the band's back catalogue - songs such as Alcoholiday and Verisimilitude would merit a place on most band's best-ofs, but were omitted here. New material is due to e released as soon as the band find a record company willing to invest in them.

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Discography

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