With their jangly guitars, sweet melodies and sweeter harmonies, Teenage Fanclub are the perfect sound for a summer’s day – and here is their latest tune.
It’s more than 30 years now since they made that breakthrough album Bandwagonesque; a record that still evokes memories of a particular moment in British music – My Bloody Valentine, Massive Attack, Primal Scream and Saint Etienne all released landmark albums that same year, 1991.
The Fannies, as they are still unfortunately known, blended the power-pop of Big Star with the folk-rock of The Byrds to create a sound that was simultaneously nostalgic yet fitted perfectly with those pre-Britpop times.
This new track from what will be their 13th album, aptly titled Nothing Lasts For Ever, immediately takes us back to that era with its wistful sound matched by a video shot at a lighthouse in Norway.
Raymond McGinley describes how the song literally came to him in the night while he was sleeping: “Towards the end of our session in Rockfield Studios making the album I woke up in the middle of the night.
“There was a guitar next to the bed. I picked it up and this song came out. The words for the chorus were there already. I recorded a rough version on my phone and then went back to sleep. We recorded the song later that day.”
The other musicians are Norman Blake on guitar, drummer Francis MacDonald, Dave McGowan on bass and Euros Childs on keyboards.