Teenage Fanclub gets a little too lost in the shadows on first record in five years
Monday, September 27, and Tuesday, September 28, Bowery Ballroom, 6 Delancey St., $25, 9:00
Thursday, September 30, Williamsburg Waterfront, $37.50, 5:30
www.myspace.com/theteenagefanclub
It’s been twenty years since Teenage Fanclub came on the scene with A CATHOLIC EDUCATION, then breaking through in the U.S. with 1992’s grungy BANDWAGONESQUE, which featured such hits as “Star Sign,” “The Concept,” and “What You Do to Me.” The Glasgow band is now back with its first studio album in five years, SHADOWS (Merge, June 2010), and over the course of twelve songs and forty-eight minutes, they show that they are not nearly as edgy as they once were. Guitarists Norman Blake and Raymond McGinley, bassist Gerard Love — who alternate songwriting duties and lead vocals — and drummer Francis MacDonald still wear their influences on their sleeves, evoking the Byrds, Neil Young, Big Star, and Jerry Garcia, but they need a wake-up call from these sleepy, treacly tunes. (Listeners will need a few wake-up calls as well.) In fact, they sing about waking up several times on the album, on the TV-theme-song-like “Baby Lee,” the tepid “Shock and Awe,” and the mundane “The Past.” “Give yourself a wake-up call,” McGinley sings on the latter, “let the past come back to rescue you.” Teenage Fanclub will have to let the past rescue them when they come to New York this week for two headlining shows at the Bowery Ballroom, September 27 with the Radar Brothers and September 28 with the Radar Brothers and the Clean, before opening for Belle & Sebastian on September 30 at the Williamsburg Waterfront.