Teenage Fanclub
The Teenage Fanclub’s first album, A Catholic Education came out in 1990. Over the last 3 decades the band have made many a great song. Lead guitarist Raymond McGinley was brilliant tonight – there were several out-of-this-world solos. He deserves to be a lot more famous.
The band no longer features founding member and great singer songwriter Gerry Love but they do have former Gorky’s Zygotic Mynci member, Euros Childs, on keyboards and David McGowan playing bass.
The most exciting moments of the evening were hearing Francis Mcdonald go mad on the drums on Warm Embrace. There was one new song, which might be entitled, Home where no matter how hard I tried to listen Norman Blake appeared to be singing “smur, smur, smur” something must have been wrong at the sound desk or with his mic as I could not make out a single line.
Teenage Fanclub playing live at the Forum, 8th September, 2021
Another track from the new LP entitled Everything Is Falling Apart went down pretty well. But it was at 10:20pm when the band gave us a rip roaring version of The Concept that the crowd went wild. The other big highlight for me was a frantic version of Metal Baby which, like The Concept, also features on their most fun album, Bandwagonesque.
I must say there were quite a few times this evening when I felt the band were sounding more exciting than they’d ever done before.
Endless Arcade was released on the PeMa label last year – tours were postponed. It was great to witness loyal fans of The Fannies being rewarded with a great show tonight.
Harry Pye
As a recent convert to Teenage Fanclub I have to confess I am less familiar with their output compared to that of Harry. That said, I found the return to the live music event pretty exciting.
I thought the lead guitar from Raymond McGinley was fantastic, especially the use of the wah-wah pedal towards the end of the gig.
I also thought Norman Blake on xylophone for one of their songs was a brave moment, (the crowd certainly enjoyed the moment with a cheer on each hit on the instrument).
Francis MacDonald kept the whole evening together as he pounded out the beats with bass player David McGowan.
I also enjoyed the vocal harmonies from keyboard player Euros Childs which gave a real Birds feel to many of the songs. That said, I could still hear the Scottish twang from front man Norman Blake which kept the whole gig very grounded.
Chris Tosic
Check this video for In our dreams taken from their new LP Endless Arcade.
Le Document was founded in November 2019 by the artists Harry Pye and Chris Tosic. Le Document is the magazine for fantastic people. Please add your email and subscribe for free via the sign up button below.
