Album: Howdy!
Year: 2000
. . .
One of the things about having three songwriters in a band is that it triples your chances at having somebody coming up with an utterly killer opening track during each album cycle. So if it was Raymond McGinley doing it with Grand Prix’s opener “About You,” and Norman Blake bringing it even harder with Songs From Northern Britain’s “Start Again,” then on 2000’s Howdy!, it was Gerald Love’s turn with the ridiculously sun-kissed “I Need Direction.”
Opening with a picked 12-string guitar from Norman Blake, “I Need Direction” starts out deceptively quiet, with Love singing the opening verse over that 12-string and utterly superfluous crowd noise:
I used to feel fine
You were to be mine
I need direction
To take me to you
Then, as drummer Paul Quinn leads the full band in and organist Findlay MacDonald adds color, “I Need Direction” picks it up, with spot-perfect “ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba” backing vocals from Blake and Raymond McGinley.
I’ve asked the sunshine
Shadowed the skyline
I need direction
To take me to you
And then, aft the song nearly stops except for a strummed guitar and three perfectly slowed down “baaaa-baaaaa-baaaas,” it’s time for “I Need Direction” to explode into its two-part chorus, with Blake & McGinley now singing harmonies.
I get brainwaves
I get visions
Slow reaction
SuperstitionI need the ways and means to get through
I need an open heart to look to
Nobody sees the same way I do
I need direction to get through
When the guitars fuzz up, the organ thickens (dirty!) and the harmonies get even sweeter during “I need the ways and means to get through”, it kills me ever time: total power pop nirvana. Also power pop nirvana, the instrumental section, which follows complete breakdown, except for an the organ, which is now beaming in from 1967, and taking a solo because why not, followed by a lovely low-down melody line solo from McGinley. All of this is followed by another explosion on the back half of the chorus and ends — weirdly, but awesomely — with one last “ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba” drenched verse. A fucking masterclass.
That said, by 2000, not even in Great Britain was anybody looking for what Teenage Fanclub were doing anymore, and not only did “I Need Direction” stall out at #48 there, Howdy! itself stalled in the U.K. album charts at #33, only three years after Songs From Northern Britain had made it to #3.
“I Need Direction”
“I Need Direction” Official Music Video
“I Need Direction” Live on the Beat Club, 2000
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