Teenage Fanclub: Facing the future in a positive state of mind
Teenage Fanclub play in Cork and Galway.
Teenage Fanclub frontman Norman Blake answers the phone amid the hustle and bustle of a house move, decamping to Scotland’s Clyde Valley. “It’s a nice part of the world, actually, it’s on the River Clyde, and they grow strawberries and tomatoes down here. The person who owns the house about four houses down is Stuart Braithwaite from Mogwai! Once I’m settled, I can bring him down for a few beers, there’s a nice park across from here.”
Amiable and excitable in equal measure, while also enjoying the promise of a new start - sounds like the perfect segue into chatting about the band’s forthcoming album Nothing Lasts Forever.
“It's been really positive. I think, partly, because it's only two years since we've put out our last album. Our cycle in the last four or five albums has been, like, five, six years, so we've realised that we may want to start making albums a bit more regularly. We're really looking forward to getting out and playing too, because as a musician, that's your bread and butter, going out and doing shows.”
By the band’s own account, Nothing Lasts Forever leans further into more reflective, personal territory, discussing changes in the members’ lives, the spectre of mortality and the weight of feeling that the passage of time exerts. Aside from holding a mirror to themselves or others as musicians, it follows in a vein of reflection that’s a hallmark of Teenage Fanclub in the present day.
“Pretty much like the last album, what we tend to do is write about our lives, the world around us, and what we experience. For me, personally, my songs, I had split with my wife of 24 years, a few years ago. We get on great now, so it's all really good. The last LP was really about me dealing with that, y'know, and the process of loss. Inevitably, this one is a bit more positive, looking to the future. Even though the title is 'Nothing Lasts Forever', my songs are really about going forward into the future, and with a more positive frame of mind.”
A look at the tracklist confirms the band’s intent, and without spoiling too much, the concept of stepping into light and sunshine recurs throughout the album’s writing. The band is known for not heading to the studio with big plans for records - was this new disposition similarly a product of circumstances, or a point of focus?
“It all starts when a line comes into your head, some type of phrase, and you just build on it. The songs are a reflection of the world, and our place in it. There's definitely a melancholic sheen going through everything, but we also don't take ourselves too seriously, we're pretty insignificant in the grand scheme of things. When we were younger, I think there would be more of a stronger idea about what the arrangements should be, we'd be way more controlling in that sense. Nowadays, because we're all great players, we kick a song off, everyone picks it up and then a few hours later, we record them.
“As you get older as a songwriter, people become less interested in what you do, but I think of songwriting as a craft. People tend to think that painters, or sculptors, get better as they get older, but if you're a musician you're supposed to get worse after 30, but that doesn't make any sense to me."
Over the course of covid, the 30th anniversary of Bandwagonesque, the band’s 1991 breakout record - famed for beating Nirvana’s era-defining Nevermind to US magazine SPIN’s ‘Album of the Year’ laurels - came and went without much in the way of fanfare. With the band’s attitude in mind, it’s a state of affairs the band prefers, as a currently-going, contemporary concern.
“We look back at that period fondly, because it established the band, and it's allowed us to make records for all these years, and to tour, where we got to go to Japan and Australia, and that was really the catalyst for everything that's happened since then.
“So, I think all having said that, we've never been ones to celebrate anniversaries, we'd rather just not make a big deal about those things. But what a privilege, to be able to make music, tour, visit places and people. When people say to me, 'what are your hobbies outside the band?', and I would say, 'buying records and playing guitars' - it's a great privilege.”
The new album is being released by the band via their own label - doing so at a time when physical media production has been afflicted by delays due to supply chain issues after the covid crisis, and the vinyl bubble of the past decade threatens to burst amid market saturation and wider changes in disposable income.
“The album is released in September, and we made the announcement [in May]. At the moment I'm watching the Beatles' Let it Be film, which is amazing. I think at one point, they're talking about 'Get Back', and one of them is like, 'oh, yeah, we could probably get this into shops next week.'
“Things have changed significantly. There's not enough pressing machines, and [the major labels] have booked them, it's just the way it goes. And I guess no one's gonna manufacture a new one, because it's quite a complicated process, so you just have to wait your turn. Record companies love long lead times, because it means more time to push it - we are our own record label, and we don't have money [for long promotional campaigns]."
He also laments that there are so many different formats for releases now. "In the past, there were a number of different CD formats, now there are vinyl formats, different pressings for indies, with different colours and inserts in each one, so that people do buy two or three - which some people do, which is again, something a bit different.”
Ahead of the new album’s release, the band are heading to Cork’s Cyprus Avenue, before playing Monroe’s in Galway, as part of the city’s folk festival. The excursion serves as a warm-up ahead of the swings and roundabouts of the next cycle of touring and promotion.
“We've been in Dublin fairly recently, I guess from the last tour - but outside of Dublin, we've not been around for quite a few years, so it's going to be pretty fun.”
- Teenage Fanclub plays Cyprus Avenue in Cork on Tuesday June 13, and Monroe’s in Galway on Wednesday June 14, for Galway Folk Festival. They return in November to play the Olympia in Dublin on Thursday 2, and Friday 3 at Belfast’s Mandela Hall.
- New single ‘Foreign Land’ is available now on streaming services; new album Nothing Lasts Forever is available to pre-order now ahead of its September 22 release at https://teenage-fanclub.tmstor.es/
