When Teenage Fanclub broke in 1991 with their third album Bandwagonesque, they were a band deeply of their time. The Scottish quintet was at once noisy enough to stand among trendsetters like Dinosaur Jr. and My Bloody Valentine, and melodic enough to fit seamlessly on post-“Alex Chilton,” Chilton-indebted college radio. The band’s zeitgeist-capturing breakthrough actually posed a threat to Nirvana come list-making season. In the wake of their banner year, however, Teenage Fanclub carved a quieter path, with each album feeling slightly less bold and more introverted. That’s not to say they retreated. As Teenage Fanclub’s heavier, gutsier proclivities subsided, they focused on becoming an even more sustainable machine, tightening up their songwriting and honing in their trademark three-part harmonies between vocalists Norman Blake, Gerard Love, and Raymond McGinley.
As the years have passed and the band's output has slowed, Teenage Fanclub’s music has evolved like a long and stable love affair, propelled by intimacy, comfort, and shared admiration. In “I’m in Love,” the opening track on Here, Teenage Fanclub’s first album in six years, Blake actually makes the comparison himself. “I like your trajectory,” he sings, “I’m in love with you, love.” The lyric could be addressing a person or just the feeling itself: a tribute to an emotion. Sunny and deceptively complex, “I’m in Love” serves as a fitting introduction to Here, the band’s subtlest, warmest release to date and also one of their strongest.
With their hushed production and contented lyrics, the 12 tracks on Here play like a series of quiet revelations, the kind of thoughts you have in moments of clarity, surrounded by people you love. The album’s best songs communicate that state of bliss with immediately gratifying melodies and effortless wisdom. The Love-penned “Thin Air” embraces the mystery of life with an energetic, Bad Reputation-era Thin Lizzy buzz. Equally euphoric is “The Darkest Part of the Night,” a sweet, autumnal exercise in classic pop songwriting, bobbing from hook to hook like the horses on a merry-go-round.
Even if Here, the band’s 10th album, finds Teenage Fanclub comfortable with their identity and largely uninterested in testing its boundaries, they still find some room for experimentation. McGinley’s contributions, particularly “Steady State,” and Love's quietly triumphant “I Have Nothing More to Say,” are the most serpentine, psychedelic tracks the band have ever recorded. And on “The First Sight,” the album’s dizzying highlight, they spin the well-trodden ’90s loud-quiet-loud dynamic into the aural equivalent of leaving a dim apartment and feeling the sun on your face. The song reaches pure ecstasy by the time it concludes with one of the album’s many fuzzy, impeccable guitar solos.
The greatest moments on Here come when Teenage Fanclub use their music to uplift, as in the cascading horns in “The First Sight” or the glimmering strings in “The Darkest Part of the Night.” They’re slightly less successful when they try to convey these feelings with their words. The deeply literal choruses of “Hold On” and “Live in the Moment” land with a healthy dose of cheese, an aspect of pop music that Teenage Fanclub have always gracefully skirted around. But, to paraphrase Norm Macdonald, it’s not sentimental if you really mean it. And judging by how many tracks on Here make reference to the simple joy of being alive, Teenage Fanclub sound like a band grateful for the time they have and entirely present within it.
