Teenage Fanclub

"I woke up one morning and the word ‘man-made’ came into my head," says Raymond McGinley. "I thought, that’s funny, because you don’t really hear that any more. People don’t refer to it like they used to with ‘man-made fibers’ on your jumpers. It just sounded strange. And we thought, maybe that applies to this thing that we’ve just done."

This thing, this new Teenage Fanclub album, was done last year during two separate sessions at Soma Electronic Music Studios in Chicago. The first session took place in February, the second during the summer, thereby ensuring the influence of the extremities of climate which prevail in the Windy City. Why Chicago? Because the Fanclub decided they weren’t going to record in the UK. It’s the first time they’ve recorded an entire album abroad. Also for the first time, they’re releasing it themselves in the UK on their homegrown, self-contained, enigmatically named label, PeMa, and in the United States on Merge Records.

"We were thinking of trying to do it in a way we hadn’t done before," says Raymond. "Which is the way we’ve approached doing most of the things we’ve done. There’s an element of trying to look for a new place to go. Sometimes that’s been closer to home and sometimes that’s been further away."

Via his ad hoc role in The Pastels, Gerard Love had worked with John McEntire, the producer and multi-instrumentalist leader of renowned left-field fusion ensemble Tortoise. He remembered that McEntire had a tremendous studio, and that Chicago was blessed with an abundance of interesting places to eat. A plan began to take shape, one that certainly seemed to fulfil Gerard’s declared brief for how Teenage Fanclub might fruitfully continue to operate. "Maybe some goals are unattainable," he considers now, when reminded of his apocalyptic statement. "But the process of trying to get there is what’s important. I’d say we all tried to write songs in a different way. I think working with John was a different experience. Having someone like him on the desk made you play in a different way or made you think about how you arranged songs… I’m not saying out of fear, but maybe the fact that he’s in Tortoise and made records with Stereolab and The High Llamas meant he wasn’t going to be so easily impressed by a xylophone solo or something! In a way, he took things out of the mix whereas maybe if we were working with someone else we’d have jammed it up too much."

"It was unusual working with John," says Norman Blake. "One aspect that we weren’t really used to is that very often if you’re in the studio and you do a take the engineer’ll crank it up to impress you, but John monitors things very quietly. So you would come back into the room and it would sound really small. Once you got your head round that it was good because you could be confident that you’d got a good take. He’s really into the detail of things. John would stop you during the middle of a take and say, ‘Sorry guys, I’m not happy with my gain structure.’ Which engineers don’t often say!"

Well, obviously…

"John’s got a good mix of both being workmanlike and musical," adds Raymond. "It was good working with somebody who’s got his own band, and there’s no ego thing there. It seemed quite an easy relationship in that sense, it was quite simple. There was no plan of what we were going to do or how we were going to do it – you just turn up and start working and get on with it. There is a Chicago thing of a no-bullshit attitude towards music. Which doesn’t mean to say
it’s lacking in musicianship or creativity."

While in Chicago the Fanclub enjoyed the egalitarian spirit of the musical community. They were impressed when Cheap Trick’s drummer Bun E. Carlos dropped by one day to buy a piece of kit. Finding themselves without an acoustic guitar – "Baggage allowance," advises Norman – they borrowed one from Wilco’s Jeff Tweedy. In this sense, the circumstantial realities of making an album a long way from home had a marked impact on how the finished article emerged the way it did.

"It was good just to walk into John’s studio with guitars, some leads and a couple of pedals," says Raymond. "’Cos it focuses you more on the musical side of things rather than getting uptight about the sounds."

"It was nice doing that," agrees Norman. "We really went over with the bare essentials. No lyrics! Hahaha!"

The laughter is knowing. Only the most myopic observer of their musical journey could claim Teenage Fanclub possess a Stakhanovite work ethic. Even so, by their standards, Man-Made represents a blizzard of activity. If they hadn’t taken so long to think of a title it could have come out months ago…

"Like a lot of records we’ve made we had an ambition of trying to get everything together before we went to the studio," says Raymond with a smile. "This record wasn’t any different than some of the others in that we weren’t as prepared as we thought we might be. But we approached it wanting to keep things relatively simple, and also going to a place to make a record in a certain period of time. We ended up thinking it would be good to do something in a more focused way."

"Definitely with most tracks we would take stuff off," adds Norman, "and that’s unusual for us."

"I think the essential part of each person’s songwriting is apparent," offers Gerard. "Maybe being more disciplined with arrangements has stripped it back to the essentials."

Amid all this talk of doing things in different ways, it is a pleasure to report that the fundamental aspects of Teenage Fanclub’s universe remain much as they ever were. Here is a band blessed with three deeply gifted songwriters, whose talents have evolved over time to arrive at a place where each complements the others’ contributions in ways that are uniquely sensitive. Thanks to the up-close intimacy of the Man-Made sound, we can hear more clearly than ever before the mutually supportive vocal mesh and feel the profound emotional impact of the melodies that drift like zephyrs through these 12 songs; songs which speak of love and life, sharing quiet truths held to be self-evident but which have been crying out for such a noble articulation as afforded here. Songs which are Man-Made and given to the world – now a richer place for their presence among us all.

For those who haven’t been keeping up, Teenage Fanclub come from Glasgow and released their debut album, A Catholic Education, in 1990, then followed it with Bandwagonesque (1991), Thirteen (1993), Grand Prix (1995), Songs From Northern Britain (1997) and Howdy! (2000). Their non-LP catalogue is better than most bands’ Grammy nominations or wish-lists to Santa Claus. They’ve had three drummers during the last 16 years, and are currently doing very nicely with the original one, Francis Macdonald.

Asked whether they’re feeling their age, Norman thinks for a bit, then says: "Basically, it’s all over if you’re on tour and you wake up one morning and you go to the gym in the hotel."

Teenage Fanclub are not yet in the hotel gym.

©Keith Cameron, March 2005