Thursday, July 15, 2010
It's Not Too Late To Start Again*
If you listed the ingredients of the sort of music I love most, you'd start with harmony vocals and guitar solos. Then you'd probably add singalong tunefulness, and a healthy sense of a band not taking itself too seriously. And if you look at that from a different angle, you'd see I've just described Teenage Fanclub.
With five years gone by since the Man Made album, it's certainly not before time that a new album 'Shadows' and the chance to see them again has had me uncommonly excited for a couple of months. Support band Veronica Falls have the slightly ragged guitar of early Teenage Fanclub, and hints of promising melody are slightly buried in the live mix. Maybe I should have listened to the tracks on their myspace a couple more times, I don't know, but I've stood through plenty worse openers and I'll be happy to see them again if they pass my way. But from the second the headliners launch into Start Again, there's only one band on my mind.
Maybe I've just been unlucky but three of my last four gigs have been blighted by unremitting dullards demanding their choice of song, to the ocasional displeasure of the turn. In this case, Norman's affability in shrugging it off is a change for the better, but I could have done without it all the same. And then Raymond rips into yet another guitar line that's half Neil Young and half purest pop, and the idiots are wiped away again for a bit.
After this much time away, and with a back catalogue that means they could do a four hour set of classic after classic, it would be a fine gig just for them being there. But in Baby Lee, and even in When I Still Have Thee which appears to be highly influenced by Nanci Griffith's 'Don't Forget About Me', they have new songs fully worth their place in the set, as Dave's pedal steel augments the perfect combination of guitars and vocals.
The world's a better place for Teenage Fanclub.
* 'It's too late to start again' is from the song on Teenage Fanclub's Grand Prix album called, surprisingly enough, Start Again. I disagree.
_
With five years gone by since the Man Made album, it's certainly not before time that a new album 'Shadows' and the chance to see them again has had me uncommonly excited for a couple of months. Support band Veronica Falls have the slightly ragged guitar of early Teenage Fanclub, and hints of promising melody are slightly buried in the live mix. Maybe I should have listened to the tracks on their myspace a couple more times, I don't know, but I've stood through plenty worse openers and I'll be happy to see them again if they pass my way. But from the second the headliners launch into Start Again, there's only one band on my mind.
Maybe I've just been unlucky but three of my last four gigs have been blighted by unremitting dullards demanding their choice of song, to the ocasional displeasure of the turn. In this case, Norman's affability in shrugging it off is a change for the better, but I could have done without it all the same. And then Raymond rips into yet another guitar line that's half Neil Young and half purest pop, and the idiots are wiped away again for a bit.
After this much time away, and with a back catalogue that means they could do a four hour set of classic after classic, it would be a fine gig just for them being there. But in Baby Lee, and even in When I Still Have Thee which appears to be highly influenced by Nanci Griffith's 'Don't Forget About Me', they have new songs fully worth their place in the set, as Dave's pedal steel augments the perfect combination of guitars and vocals.
The world's a better place for Teenage Fanclub.
* 'It's too late to start again' is from the song on Teenage Fanclub's Grand Prix album called, surprisingly enough, Start Again. I disagree.
Labels: gigs, Teenage Fanclub
