Few things in life are more comforting than a Teenage Fanclub album and their latest album, Shadows, is no exception. Over twenty years into their career the Glasgow band are still the closest thing that British music has to Crosby, stills and Nash.
The four albums that they released from 1991’s Bandwagonesque (and newcomers to the Fanclub may be surprised to hear that this album was beaten only by Nevermind in NME’s album of the year list – ahead of Screamadelica, Out of Time and Blue Lines) to songs From Northern Britain is as good a quartet as any band has managed to produce. Howdy! was a patchy affair and 2005’s Man-Made lacked the warmth that is so essential to the band’s sound. Five years later the band has come back into their stride with one of the year’s most gently accomplished releases.
The album is not going to win awards, and doesn’t break any new ground, but it is assured and quietly wins you over with each listen. Second song, Norman Blake’s ‘Baby Lee’, is close to perfect and if it had been released in the early 70s it might be a commercial radio standard today.
As with the last few releases each of the three songwriters gets democratically equal airtime. Four songs by each in a regimented order. This could make for an artificial flow, but it stands up very well. Each singer acquits themselves well and the first three songs are particularly strong, Love’s ‘Sometimes I Don’t Need to Believe Anything’, the aforementioned ‘Baby Lee’ and McGinley’s typically downbeat ‘The Fall’. Norman Blake’s songs (as in normally the case) are the pick of the bunch; he is an unsung hero of British music and has seldom penned a less than excellent song.
It could be argued that the album has few standout tracks, staying on a very even keel throughout, on the flipside the quality hardly dips from start to finish. Teenage Fanclub have a unique and unmistakeable sound, a gentle and polite sound, but touched with some real beauty.
This is the kind of album that slips by without the need to take notice or skip a track. That may seem to damn it with faint praise, but far from it. I can already see it as being the soundtrack to a very pleasant summer.
8/10
By Dorian Rogers, June 2010
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