Ain't That Enough
scottish jangle pop with a distinct beatle-esque flair? sign me up.
I grew up in and around Athens, Georgia, so besides the obvious influences of country and southern hip-hop, my formative musical experiences were centered around what could broadly be considered “college rock”. The most famous band in the genre is Athens’s own R.E.M., but there were also many other Athenian groups working in the vicinity of the college sound including Let’s Active, Pylon, and Guadalcanal Diary. Outside of Athens, there were bands from New Jersey (like Dramarama and the Smithereens), Massachusetts (Throwing Muses and the Lemonheads), and Minnesota (the Replacements and Hüsker Dü). Even further afield, the lines between new wave, post-rock, college rock, and good old fashioned alternative rock became far blurrier, with bands ranging from the Smiths and the Cure to the relatively obscure guitar bands from the C86 microgenre.
Yes, I’m getting to the point. I promise.
One of the bands at the tail end of the C86 movement was the Boy Hairdressers, a Glaswegian group most notable for a song that isn’t about what you think it is, “Golden Showers”. When that band broke up in 1989, some of the members [Raymond McGinley (guitars), Francis MacDonald (drums) and Norman Blake (guitars)] met up with Gerard Love (bass) to form a new band with some of the same ideas.
That’s right, we’re doing Teenage Fanclub today. Get ready.
The next year, they recorded A Catholic Education, immediately after which MacDonald left to finish his degree at university. Brendan O’Hare joined as his replacement, re-recording some tracks before the album’s release. Originally intended to be an independent offering, the nascent album attracted attention from two small newish labels in Matador (US) and Paperhouse (UK). The songs were rough and choppy in parts, and reflected the lack of studio experience the band had acquired up to that point. The core components of their sound were almost in place, though.
After their debut, several larger labels came calling, but the band was still under contract to Matador for another album. Allegedly, Teenage Fanclub recorded an album in one night as an attempt to dislodge themselves from Matador’s grasp. The band claims that The King was just a fun experiment that started out as a joke, but then satisfied the requirement with no penalty. Other more cynical observers say that the boys knew exactly what they were doing from the beginning.
Teenage Fanclub’s biggest US hit came with 1991’s Bandwagonesque, the album in which the band became who they are. Combining sharp hooks, anthemic guitars, and Byrds-like harmonies, Teenage Fanclub married Hüsker Dü to Badfinger with a Scottish accent. It received widespread critical acclaim too, beating out Nirvana’s Nevermind in the year-end SPIN awards. Kurt Cobain didn’t mind, citing Teenage Fanclub as one of his favorite bands in the world, going so far as to have them open for Nirvana on several occasions.
The band began recording a follow-up soon after wrapping up the tour, but the album itself wouldn’t emerge for almost two years. 1993’s Thirteen was produced by Teenage Fanclub themselves, but the process was fraught with difficulty. O’Hare left the band at its conclusion, citing the ever popular “creative differences” as a reason. When the album was released, it was largely seen as a disappointment and a commercial setback, staying on the UK charts for only three weeks and failing to chart entirely in America.
Undeterred, Teenage Fanclub hired Paul Quinn to replace O’Hare and recorded Grand Prix in 1995. Critical response rebounded, and some say it’s even better than Bandwagonesque. The commercial outcome improved as well, reaching #7 on the UK charts. Breaking through in America was still largely a pipe dream, as Thirteen killed a significant amount of momentum.
1997 saw Teenage Fanclub release their most successful album to date, Songs from Northern Britain. The relative success of Grand Prix allowed them more time, money, and resources to produce a more mature album, and SFNB is surely that. Reaching #3 on the UK charts and featuring their highest charting single “Ain’t That Enough”, the album made a distinct impact in the UK. American promotions were strong, although perhaps misguided. A tour opening for Radiohead was eagerly anticipated, but the label chose to market them as an alt-country band in the style of Wilco or Uncle Tupelo. This approach confused American audiences and the tour was not successful for the band.
In 2000, the band released Howdy! after some lineup changes. Keyboardist Finlay MacDonald joined, having previously played with Norman Blake in BMX Bandits a decade earlier and serving as touring keyboardist for the SFNB promotions. Between the recording of the album and its release, Quinn left to be replaced with former drummer Francis MacDonald, who had also played with BMX Bandits. (It’s not just that it’s a small world, it’s that the Glaswegian guitar pop scene on the late Eighties was exceptionally incestuous.) The album itself is lighter and softer than their previous output, honing in on harmonies and melodies rather than guitar fireworks. It only reached #33 on the charts, but was received favorably by critics, despite some misgivings that the style had flattened out and stopped growing. Part of the reason for the less than stellar chart performance was the ever popular label politics, as Creation Records (their label since Bandwagonesque) went out of business and their catalog was absorbed by Sony.
After 2002’s collaboration with outsider artist Jad Fair entitled Words of Wisdom and Hope, the band released a greatest hits compilation with the unnecessarily long title of Four Thousand Seven Hundred and Sixty-Six Seconds – A Short Cut to Teenage Fanclub featuring a handful of new songs that satisfied the Sony contract. Finlay Macdonald left the band to be replaced by multi-instrumentalist Dave McGowan, who would become an important member in later years. Their next independently released album Man-Made came out in 2005, followed by Shadows in 2010 and Here in 2016. Each album is perfectly pleasant, but not particularly compelling.
2018 saw a massive shift, as Gerard Love grew reluctant to tour due to a disdain for flying. The band could not find a way to accommodate his wishes, so they parted ways. McGowan shifted over to bass, while Euros Childs (formerly of Gorky's Zygotic Mynci) joined to replace McGowan on keyboards. Endless Arcade was recorded at the end of 2019 for a release the next year, but the Pandemic happened, delaying its release until 2021.
All this is to say that Teenage Fanclub is a band that reminds one of Big Star, Badfinger, the Byrds, the Beach Boys, the Beatles, and several other bands that don’t begin with the second letter of the alphabet. They took those influences, married them with an impeccable ear for harmony and guitar tone, and set about producing miniature masterpieces. Despite a near invisibility in America, power-pop, jangle-pop, and college rock aficionados the world over recognize them as melodic marvels.
Won’t you come with me on a journey through their catalogue? I’ve highlighted what I believe to be their ten best songs. As usual, these are my opinions and my opinions alone. They are a reflection of my perceptions at one particular moment in time, and would almost certainly change if I were to write this even an hour earlier or later. (Probably later. Deadlines aren’t my friend these days, even the self-imposed ones.) Let’s get started.
10. Neil Jung
The second single from 1997’s Grand Prix, “Neil Jung” was written and sung by Norman Blake about his former BMX Bandits bandmate Duglas T. Stewart and his lackluster love life. The name of the song comes from a combination of Carl Jung and Neil Young, the first coming from the amateur psychoanalysis of the lyrics and the second from the guitar solo which is straight out of the Crazy Horse playbook.
9. Verisimilitude
If you like meta-analysis, Raymond McGinley has the love song for you. A love song about struggling to write love songs, with a ten dollar word as a title. For those of you too embarrassed to look up the word or admit you don’t know the definition off the top of your head, Merriam-Webster defines it as “similarity to the truth”. For those of you who knew it already, congratulations, you’ve got me beat.
8. Everything Flows
The lead single from their debut album, it’s the only one on the record that sounds like their future work. The rest of the songs dive into Mudhoney or Jesus and Mary Chain fuzz-rock, but “Everything Flows” from Norman Blake’s pen gives the first indication of their harmonies and melodies intertwining in new and exciting ways. The swirling shoegazey guitars are still there, but within the corpus of the composition there beats a bubblegum heart.
7. Dumb Dumb Dumb
This was the second single from Howdy!, and is a strikingly angular piece within an otherwise super-soft milieu. Norman Blake borrows from Pete Yorn and Jeff Tweedy with an alt-country twist, featuring wind instruments and stereo panning to create a shifting soundscape that reflects the uneasiness in the lyrics. This is the most recent song on this list (spoilers!), and is arguably the last time they stepped outside of their comfort zone.
6. The Concept
The opening song from Bandwagonesque starts their landmark album with tempo shifts and minor seventh chords reminiscent of “Michelle” before turning into an Alex Chilton homage. One of their best pre-choruses, in a band known for melodic turnarounds. The false ending combined with falsetto is an inspired choice by Blake, who says he wrote the lyrics in about twenty minutes with no real thought behind them. Don’t miss the Robin Trower style outro solo.
5. I Don’t Want Control of You
Norman Blake says this is probably his favorite song he’s written, and it’s a winner. The second single from SFNB, it starts off with a psychedelic folk intro in the style of Donovan before veering off into Byrds territory. The double and triple tracked vocals are richly, densely layered over chorus-laden guitars. The final stanza features a delightful key change that highlights Blake’s range.
4. Star Sign
Gerard Love’s first entry on this list, but not his last. “Star Sign” was the first single off of Bandwagonesque and the most successful single of their careers thus far. The murky vocals blend into the Replacements-style harmonic buzzsaw of the guitars in a way reminiscent of yet distinct from Sebadoh or Dinosaur Jr.. The swirling offsets link up in an ocean of sound.
3. What You Do To Me
Combining a Marc Bolan strut with a Badfinger-like harmony, this marriage of glam and power-pop somehow walks the tightrope of cocky but sweet. Norman Blake’s vocals apply enough force to fill an arena. There’s another false finish that shifts the last few seconds into overdrive. There’s been a dearth of pop songs under two minutes and thirty seconds since the Sixties, and this is a resuscitation of the art form. It’s a capsule class in pop songwriting.
2. Ain’t That Enough
Gerard Love contributes another Brian Wilson teenage symphony, complete with references to summer, love, and angst over the future. All of the little things come together: chiming guitars, little xylophone accents, even a galloping bassline in the pre-chorus that brings the whole thing together with a sense of urgency and a vague impending doom. The triple harmonies are stacked upon one another with Phil Spector precision.
1. Sparky’s Dream
Critically acclaimed as one of the top three Teenage Fanclub songs of all time. It’s indisputably in the highest tier. Gerard Love’s accent comes through so strongly that it adds to the charm of the direct lyrics:
Got a crystal ball to see her in the morning And magic eyes to read between the lines I took a wrong direction from a shooting star In a love dimension, fading fast from taking this too far
The chromatic shifts with each bar harken back to the best of Big Star. The Beach Boys harmonies in the background of the choruses are like gossamer wings. The muscular yet nimble guitars interleave with the rhythm section to create a wall of sound. If it’s not perfect, I’d like to hear what is. It’s their best song to me.
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