Smells Like Teen Spirit

Although a decade may have passed since they first took to a stage, squint your eyes at the Olympia and Teenage Fanclub still look like skinny white boys playing pristine, melodic guitar pop. It s only when you get closer that you see the faces beginning to get on more than smiling terms with crow s feet. It has to be said, though, for a band in their mid-thirties, the Fannies have aged very well. With a new album in the shops in the shape of the fabulous Howdy (their debut release on a major label), and their first tour in over two years, life is good for the Glasgow popsters.

Rewind the clock back seven hours and I m sitting in the band s dressing room, while vocalist/guitarist Norman Blake is having trouble working the stereo in the corner. I lend my assistance and before you can say Stop the prog rock , ELO are blasting forth from the speakers, while Norman goons his way around the room, conducting the orchestral pomp and cermony with a shit-eating grin on his face: Wait til you hear this bit this is so over the top, it s great . The song finishes, eventually, and Norman starts by telling me how pleased the band are with Howdy and how they re especially delighted to be on the road again.
The album is their first for Columbia, part of the Sony empire. This change of labels was forced upon them due to last year s break-up of Alan McGee s Creation label, which had been their home for so long. There have been no hard feelings, though, and McGee is still the band s publisher.
We were in the studio when it all happened, Norman recalls, and Alan gave us a call to warn us that he was going to dissolve the label but that he would honour the recording contract, so we could finish the album and they would pay for it. He also offered to help us as much as he could.
Sony had first option on the finished album and upon hearing Howdy s wonderfully melodic strains, they wisely decided to take it up. The move to Columbia wasn t hugely upsetting for the Fannies. After all, they already had their album recorded so it wasn t as if anyone could try to make them change things.
Contractually, we ve got full control over what we do, Norman explains, so we re not really interested in what the record company want us to release. We re not unreasonable: we will listen to them. But if we think the record is finished we will make the record company put it out that way.
As now seems par for the course when it comes to new Teenage Fanclub albums, Howdy has been glowingly reviewed by the music press. I wondered if Norman ever feels peeved that this critical acclaim has so far failed to translate into platinum discs?
I guess we ve never really worried about that, he sighs. A lot of people don t think we re ambitious. There s a Creation book out at the moment where Alan McGee tells the story about a track from this album called Dumb Dumb Dumb . When he heard it in the studio, he was all enthusiastic and said, It s a hit if you get Youth to remix it . I said I guess we can let him have a go at it cos we d be really interested to hear that. So we sent the track to Youth, who liked it but he wanted us
to rerecord it. We didn t mind his remixing it but we didn t want to
re-record the track. So in the book McGee says that he thinks that was a mistake and that it shows that we aren t ambitious. I think he s wrong. I think we are ambitious and we would like to sell records. We re still friends with Alan, though, and I m happy for him to say things like that it s just his opinion.
The likes of Travis, Radiohead and Coldplay, to name but three, are enjoying considerable success at the moment, wouldn t it be a wonderful irony if these twenty-something bands were to pave the way for the elder statesmen of Teenage Fanclub to become a huge success?
You never know, Norman grins. That would be nice. I think it s a cyclical thing. Things come and go out of fashion. We ve been on the periphery of a few fashions. The first time we played here, actually, was with Sonic Youth, who are friends. Musically, we are miles apart but we are really good friends. We also played with Nirvana, and the press started calling Teenage Fanclub the British grunge band , which totally missed the point. We d become friends with those people through mutual friends like The Pastels and they appreciated what we did, and we liked a lot of the grunge bands but we never made music like that.
The Britpop thing kinda by-passed us too, he continues, fortunately, though, we ve never been part of any movement, because if you re part of a scene, bands tend to die with the scene, apart from someone like The Charlatans, who came out of the Manchester scene and made their own career.
Who needs to be part of the latest passing trend though, when you can still pen classic tunes like current single, I Need Direction or the brilliant The Town And The City . It struck this listener, though, that tracks like the aforementioned Direction , My Uptight Life and Can t Find My Way Home are dealing with the realisation that the Fannies are no spring chickens any more, and questioning where they are headed.
I d imagine that s true, Norman muses. The songs you mentioned two are Raymond s and one is Gerry s and while we don t really discuss our lyrics with each other, we do tend to write about what happens to us in our lives and the way we re feeling. We are all in our mid-30s and if you re trying to write honestly about your life that will come across. I don t think we re all on a big downer about getting older but I think that it is something you think about a bit more as it happens to you.
Many industry sources are predicting that Howdy could finally be the album to catapult Teenage Fanclub to fame, fortune and being recognised in Tescos, thanks to a combination of their tuneful mastery and the support of one of the biggest record companies in the world. Norman would be far from averse to the idea.
We would like our albums and the group to be successful, of course we would, he enthuses. Why else do people start groups? But it s something you can t really think about it either happens or it doesn t. If your expectations are too high, most of the time you are gonna be disappointed. If it happens for us, that would be great, but if it doesn t it ll be fine because we ll still make more records and we ll still sell a certain amount of them. We ve been doing this for 10 years, so it s not like we think we ve got one last chance to make a hit record or anything.

Howdy is out now on Columbia Records.