Bellshill’s Teenage Fanclub are probably most known for their critically acclaimed albums Bandwagonesque, Songs from Northern Britain and Grand Prix. As with Manda Rin, Japan has remained especially faithful to The Fannies, and the band will return there again in August for the Summersonic festival in Tokyo and Osaka.
Ragged grunge and delicate pop songcraft met on these Glaswegians’ breakthrough 1991 album, Bandwagonesque, making them seem, at the time, a sort of mild Scottish analogue to Nirvana. But the similarity turned out to be only riff-deep: Soon Teenage Fanclub dropped the noisy haze and concentrated on the simple clarity of Byrds-y, Big Star-y guitar pop. The group’s three songwriters, Norman Blake, Gerard Love, and Raymond McGinley — three George Harrisons, not an agitator or egotist among them — never had much rage anyway and so, as it turns out, neither burned out nor faded away.
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After first gaining acclaim for a densely melodic sound which anticipated the coming emergence of grunge, Scotland’s Teenage Fanclub spent the remainder of their career as torch-bearers for the power pop revival, unparalleled among their generation for both their unwavering adherence to and brilliant reinvention of the classic guitar pop approach of vintage acts like Big Star and Badfinger.
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Blessed with the talents of three formidable singers and songwriters (Norman Blake, Gerard Love, and Raymond McGinley, respectively) all sharing an unerring knack for crafting immediately infectious melodies, Teenage Fanclub’s radiant brand of pop classicism enjoyed only a brief moment devotion to its unapologetically old-fashioned sensibility yielded of commercial and critical vogue, and over time, the band’s dogged increasingly dwindling fan base and virtually non-existent record sales.
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Nevertheless, almost none of their contemporaries can claim either Teenage Fanclub’s consistency or longevity though never groundbreaking or hip, their music possesses a timelessness and accessibility matched by precious few.
More information on the festival at www.summersonic.com
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GdPyC9BKb_8
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