We're Not Who You Think We Are
B-side, 1997
. . .
Your heart has been broken again, it’s broken
This b-side, which is on the shortlist of Prettiest Songs Ever Recorded, Indiepop Division, is also as obscure as they come, having only ever been released as a b-side to 1997’s “Ain’t That Enough” single, but I swear on a stack of Bandwagonesque reissues that they never recorded anything quite so exquisitely beautiful.
[Read more…] about Certain Songs #2661: Teenage Fanclub – “Broken”
Album: Songs From Northern Britain
Year: 1997
. . .
In 1997, I was still wishing that Teenage Fanclub would somehow revert to the fuzz and grit than lived under the pretty songs on Bandwagonesque, and therefore definitely underrated Songs From Northern Britain, which ignored my wishes and kept the songs clean and tight. And so if I sniffed it at at the time, 25 years later, it sounds pretty great, and even back then I knew that the opening track, Norman Blake’s “Start Again” was an all-time great Teenage Fanclub song.
[Read more…] about Certain Songs #2660: Teenage Fanclub – “Start Again”
Album: Grand Prix
Year: 1995
. . .
My other favorite song from Grand Prix was also written by Raymond McGinley, who was on quite a roll in the mid-1990s, if you agree with me that “on a roll” equals “writing the songs that Jim likes the most.” Which, of course, is totally up to you. But he also wrote my favorite b-side from this era, “My Life,” from the “Neil Jung” single, for what it’s worth.
[Read more…] about Certain Songs #2659: Teenage Fanclub – “Verisimilitude”
Album: Grand Prix
Year: 1995
. . .
A couple of things happened to Teenage Fanclub between 1993’s Thirteen and 1995’s Grand Prix. First off, drummer Brendan O’Hare left, to be replaced by Paul Quinn, and secondly, Norman Blake grew his hair out and a pretty thick beard, perhaps to make sure that nobody would mistake them for a Brit-pop band, despite the fact that no less a personage than Noel Gallagher was on record as well and truly loving them.
[Read more…] about Certain Songs #2658: Teenage Fanclub – “About You”
Album: Thirteen (Bonus Track)
Year: 1993
. . .
The bonus tracks that kinda sorta redeemed the U.S. CD version were a weird and varied bunch: two songs by soon-to-depart drummer Brendan O’Hare, including the soft-rocking near-classic “Golden Glades;” covers of Phil Ochs and the Flying Burrito Brothers and right there in the middle, the Raymond McGinley’s devastating “Weird Horses,” which starts with a lonely acoustic guitar and an even lonelier vocal performance.
[Read more…] about Certain Songs #2657: Teenage Fanclub – “Weird Horses”
Album: Thirteen
Year: 1993
. . .
The thirteenth and final song on Teenage Fanclub’s album 1993 album Thirteen, which was named either of the number of songs on the album — there was a lot of that going on in 1993, cf. Paul Westerberg’s 14 Songs — or the epochal Big Star song, was Gerald Love’s tribute song, “Gene Clark.”
[Read more…] about Certain Songs #2656: Teenage Fanclub – “Gene Clark”
Album: Thirteen
Year: 1993
. . .
The three major-label breakthrough follow-up albums that I was most looking forward to in 1993 were Nirvana’s In Utero, Matthew Sweet’s Altered Beast and Teenage Fanclub’s Thirteen, but the only one of which I well and truly ended up loving was In Utero. Another thing these albums all had in common was the production strategies were completely different from the previous records: Albini’s famous bare-bones style did Nirvana just fine, but I had definite issues with Richard Dashut’s jumbling everything together on Altered Beast after Fred Maher’s clean separation on Girlfriend, and don’t even get me started on Andy MacPherson’s production of Thirteen.
[Read more…] about Certain Songs #2655: Teenage Fanclub – “Tears Are Cool”
Album: Bandwagonesque
Year: 1991
. . .
Alright, before we can dig into my once and future favorite Teenage Fanclub song, we have to address the big pink (and yellow) elephant in the room: the staggeringly awful album cover for Bandwagonesque. If Nirvana went and tossed a naked toddler into a swimming pool chasing a dollar bill on a fishhook because they wanted to make a comment on how capitalism so thoroughly corrupts us from such an early age that it was inevitable they would sign to a major label, that was one thing, but Teenage Fanclub plunking a garish yellow cartoon moneybag over a scorching pink background was something else entirely.
[Read more…] about Certain Songs #2654: Teenage Fanclub – “Alcoholiday”
Album: Bandwagonesque
Year: 1991
. . .
So, if “The Concept” leaned on the Crazy Horse side of the triangulation that made Bandwagonesque so great, and “December” leaned on the Big Star side, then “Star Sign” definitely leaned on the Sonic Youth side, fading up from the ether riding a shimmering, glimmering wave of spaced out feedback that was like the background noise of a moonless starry night where everywhere in the sky you looked was prettier than everywhere else.
[Read more…] about Certain Songs #2653: Teenage Fanclub – “Star Sign”
Album: Bandwagonesque
Year: 1991
. . .
Only in 1991 would a band stick the one-minute skronkfest in between the closing of the epic opener “The Concept” and the next proper song on the album, Gerald Love’s beyond lovely “December.”
And only in 1991 would it make sense: after all, you gotta remind the punters that the noise is still in the equation, and will be rearing its head throughout. In this case, though it was the perfect palate cleanser, because it makes the opening of “December” — the guitars of Norman Blake & Raymon McGinley chiming back and forth while Gerald Love’s bass climbs up the ladder and slides back to the ground — even more lovely than it already was.
[Read more…] about Certain Songs #2652: Teenage Fanclub – “December”