I can’t think of another pop group that comes with a more fitting name than Teenage Fanclub, not because the majority of it’s fans are teens or that they even have a fan club, but because they bring out the inner teen in those of us who have an inner teen. Few bands have written with so much affection for the teen-age condition – not with dark tales of self-destruction or bullied loners shooting up the schoolyard – but by mixing the melodic, stylistically complex approach of classic British bubblegum power pop with punk’s irony and distorted guitars. Sure, some of the lyrics are sophomoric if not often downright insipid and even their album covers look like they could be designed and executed by 13 year olds (they are crap – take Bandwagonesque, Spin Magazine’s 1991’s album of the year, a wonky yellow sack of cash floating on a lurid hot pink background). But they distinguished itself as a maverick pop band by trading in the typical self-serious, clamorous sound and fury of adolescent angst bands with melodic hooks and boyish harmonies.
The beloved band that emerged from the Glasgow C86 scene and has had a decades-long, mostly unrequited flirtation with stardom, emerges from isolation about every 5 years. I saw them at The Avalon in 1994, opening for Radiohead at The Wiltern in ’97, at The Knitting Factory and/or The Troubadour in 2005 and then again Monday night at the El Rey, a short jaunt from my office on Wilshire Blvd.
It’s trite but true that some music plays like a soundtrack to certain periods of your life. Bandwagonesque and Grand Prix were that soundtrack to my life in the mid to late 1990’s, an agonizing time of what I can only describe as drug and depression induced manic depression (“Falling into line but I’m doing nothing. We’ve got nothing worth discussing.Went to go but it’s all hazy. People say I’m going crazy”). My copy of Grand Prix was the the glass table if you know what I mean. That music devastated me and ruined my life but also saved it. Hence the overextended tumult of teenagerly type emotion every time I see them perform. Long past a brief flirtation with a showy career, the Fanclub have settled into a slow groove, taking up to five years between albums. Every 5 years they emerge. Then they seem to vanish. Teenage Fanclub could be the archetypal Great Lost Band except that they never really show any sign of misplacing themselves. They always come back.
Despite their their music’s timelessness and accessibility, Teenage Fanclub is a cult band’s cult band, never groundbreaking or hip, never particularly fashionable. But then if you’re never in fashion, you can’t drift out and unhipness has kept them steady and reliable rock stars, while never being anything like guys in rock n’ roll bands. The career arc for many of their peers has included irrelevance, hair transplants, spiteful breakups followed by filthy lucre reunions, or shotgun blasts to the head. Teenage Fanclub has avoided all those things, retaining a rare prestige among critics and musicians, a fierce devotion from their fans and a consistency and longevity not achieved by many of their contemporaries. Their renowned irreverence grew out of an unwillingness to adopt the rebellious, angsty bombast of many of their fellow rock bands that dominated the alternative scene. In contrast, The Fanclub has an almost supernatural ability to craft a immediately infectious pop song, tastefully distilled down to it’s charming, harmony-drenched essence. Guitarist Norman Blake said something I loved: “To me, that whole thing of making a big ugly noise is a very middle-class thing.”
The paradox of Teenage Fanclub’s brand of infectious, sing-along pop is that  it isn’t blaring from a million radios. It never really caught on with the masses, a fact that the enraptured concertgoers belting out the chorus to “The Concept” at the El Rey Monday night would be powerless to explain. The band’s 90-minute set, which spanned the 20 years between its first album and their latest, “Shadows”, consisted of what under different circumstances could have qualified as nothing but hits. That is, if the band had had any. By the glorious mid-set run of non-hits – “About You”, and beat- stomping their way through a shower of fuzz guitars” The Concept”, there were radiant choruses that crashed through ruminating verses on “Don’t Look Back” and a rendition of “Sparky’s Dream” that leaves you wondering why its parent album, 1995’s Grand Prix, didn’t jettison Teenage Fanclub to the top of the British pop charts.
Like a baseball team with 3 aces on the starting rotation, Teenage Fanclub is blessed with 3 formidable singers/songwriters. They all looked infinitely more youthful and refreshed than in 2005. They looked great. The unofficial frontman, Norman Blake, the oft-dubbed “nicest man in rock” wore math teacher glasses and a scratchy green sweater that he never shed despite the sweltering heat.
Like me, though their early gigs were riotous, they have since established a policy of greater sobriety. They are softer and slower. They are torch-bearers for the power pop revival and are unparalleled among their generation for their unwavering reinvention of the classic pop approach of vintage acts like Big Star and Badfinger and The Archies. You really can age gracefully.
The songs off the new album sounded great and familiar and refreshingly, the old songs didn’t feel like a concession to crowd-pleasing nostalgia, but rather as an acknowledgment of the changing lives of all of us in the room. You didn’t feel old against 20-something floppy haireds or old against glory days reliving has-beens. They are old, we are old and it didn’t feel bad. My friend Sheryl – whom I have known for 20 years – said in the middle of their set: “I am privileged to grow old with Teenage Fan Club!” The passage of time has been a theme of their songs, and as they sing about growing older to an audience experiencing it with them, it’s hard not to be moved by their songs, all five members’ voices blended in angelic harmonies that seemed to go on forever. It’s a familiarity, and the sense that they have grown older with their audience that drives the level of affection their fans feel for them.
The band closed the encore out with “Everything Flows” – their first single. There were several sets worth of material that we didn’t get to: “Mellow Doubt”, “Neil Jung” and Alcoholiday”, their best song. They are as pleasantly anachronistic now as they were 20 years ago. Playing exclusively in incredibly intimate venues to an unwaveringly loyal fan base, the great modern masters of the perfect pop song. Low-profile but inarguably icons, not least to every band to come out of Glasgow for the past 15 years: Belle & Sebastian to Franz Ferdinand to Snow Patrol. They are aware of how much they are respected and are careful in their dealings with the business (they self-release their albums).
One of the band members – not sure which – said something that pretty much summed up the group: “As a group we’ve never thrived on conflict. We make harmonic music. We’ve always tried to be decent.”
Teenagers at a Rock Show
Shadows is out on Merge Records right now
See you in 5 years.