Teenage Fanclub’s Shadows is—with the possible exception of a little affair called Sir Lucious Left Foot: The Son of Chico Dusty—the best produced record of the year, so the stakes are high in trying to replicate that sound live. The first thing to report about the band’s appearance at First Avenue is that they rose to the challenge. The test came during “Sometimes I Don’t Need To Believe In Anything,” the new album’s opener and the second song in their set, a crystalline moment when every chiming and clicking and forwardly rushing part stands out in beautiful relief, no less so live (the lifting string arrangement was a bit drowned out, but then it had to be replicated via keyboard).
The setlist emphasized Shadows and its spiritual predecessors from the band’s creative peak years, 1995’s Grand Prix and 1997’s Songs from Northern Britain. It’s worth noting that Shadows, being the orderly culmination of a trend that has been obvious in the sequencing of Teenage Fanclub’s past albums, presents each of the four new songs by the band’s three songwriters in an alternating order (from Gerard Love to Norman Blake to Raymond McGinley), so that any three consecutive songs will give you a snapshot of “where they are now.” (The math suggests that each need only write one great song per year to produce a great new Teenage Fanclub album every five years, but of course this ignores the extent of the collaboration and meticulous orchestration that goes into making each song a sparkling beauty.) Accordingly, I’ll try to paint a picture of who this band is by singling out each man’s finest, or most noteworthy, moment at First Avenue.
It was perhaps inevitable that Gerard Love would one day write a pacifist anthem, and the new “Shock & Awe” is a beauty. His vocal melodies have always been so subtle and slippery as to nearly function, more than his own playing, as the songs’ bass lines, and here his singing is so gentle and, lifted by the sublime harmonies of the chorus, so serene, that the words (“I aim for a peaceful life”) are like the title cards of a silent film whose mood is all in the images. On stage, Love’s serious silence is betrayed occasionally by a smile.
Raymond McGinley is seriously silent on stage too, but despite the Pink Floyd-ian calm that characterizes his songs on Shadows, I think his demeanor conceals a fierce commitment to his band’s bygone heavy riffage, and a conviction that rock ‘n’ roll should not be a pose but a moment that emerges when the body needs it to. His “Verisimilitude,” with its anti-rebellion manifesto (“I don’t need an attitude / Rebellion is a platitude / I only hope the verse is good / I hate verisimilitude”), is worth more than a hundred punk songs. The band brought the song, with the aplomb of a more characteristically “loud” band, to a blazing peak, McGinley at the lead, before an abrupt end and a return to the slow shimmery chords of his new songs.
In a way, I feel that Teenage Fanclub made a name with, and continue to specialize in, alternate universe prom songs, and Norman Blake’s pre-encore closer “The Concept” is still their crowning achievement in that regard. The slow dance instrumental coda, with its intertwining guitar solos (you can almost see them dancing there under the mirrorball), is one of those moments that can bring an audience together into a sort of oneness. Blake himself is a great unifier and functions as the band’s ambassador to the audience, handling the job with charm and good nature and a Scottish accent that only seems to emphasize the former qualities. The latest iteration of his sunny disposition (well, he has dark days too) is the rousing major chord number “Baby Lee,” which could make a million Teenage Fanclub fans anew.
There are few bands I’ve spent more time listening to over the course of my life (and fewer still more beloved by Big Takeover writers), and yet, seeing Teenage Fanclub in person, I had a feeling that I neither know these men as intimately, nor have thought about them as deeply, as some other musicians I call my favorites. I think this has something to do with the way the band’s songs, while highly personal, have a kind of self-effacing quality. Five years ago, Norman Blake sang, “My life is going fast, it’s make believe,” on “It’s All In My Mind,” the stunner that sets the stage for the masterful Man Made. He sang those words again at First Avenue, and if once the refrain sounded like an attempt to quell the onrush of time and maintain a kind of reflective and nostalgic present, well, now we know that even nostalgia doesn’t keep. It’s five years later, and “It’s All In My Mind” too has passed into history. But this isn’t some kind of personal tragedy for Norman Blake. He’s only sharing with us what we all know. The band’s songs are first person but always one step removed from autobiography, one step closer to nature, the seasons, the sweet life we’ve all glimpsed.
Setlist:
Start Again
Sometimes I Don’t Need To Believe In Anything
The Past
It’s All In My Mind
Don’t Look Back
Baby Lee
Verisimilitude
Shock & Awe
I Don’t Want Control Of You
About You
Sweet Days Waiting
Your Love Is The Place Where I Come From
Ain’t That Enough
Mellow Doubt (audience request)
When I Still Have Thee
Sparky’s Dream
The Concept
Can’t Feel My Soul (Encore)
I Need Direction (Encore)
Today Never Ends (Encore)
Everything Flows (Encore)
