It has been quite a journey hearing Teenage Fanclub move through the decades growing older, with the ageing process transitions reflected in their music. If there was a burning sense life was starting to feel like a hard shock and that the world was starting to spin backwards in 2021, only increased when the Fannies released that year’s Endless Arcade album. Not only was it the first album without co-founder, songwriter, vocalist Gerard Love, but there was darkness bound up in Norman Blake’s downbeat penned songs reflecting on his time surrounding his marriage break up.
How time passes theme is nothing new in the Fannies songs over the years, and with the album title Nothing Lasts Forever it continues to reflect how life has been treating the now chief songwriters Blake and Raymond McGinley, as themes of time moving on and light dominate – check out the song titles ‘I Left A Light On’, ‘See The Light’, ‘Back To The Light’, ‘Falling Into The Sun’ – as a metaphor for hope and as a future destination. The positivity and glow is largely back, and the deceptively simplicity of their songs is still a skill they inhibit as the band sound liquid smooth as a unit, with all the parts fitting together like a hand in a velvet glove.
Yes, the band continue to sound as you will expect them to be in their middle age period – The Byrds-esque harmonies and Big Star guitar strummy melodies – but why change a formula that works and is of course, entirely the sound of what we associate with the Fannies. Recorded in ten days at the legendary Rockfield Studios, the countryside setting has etched into these ten songs as they acquire gorgeous pastoral brushstrokes.
The sustained feedback opening proceedings on the breezy ‘Foreign Land’ sets the melodic stall out, both aurally and lyrically, “it’s time to move along, leave the past behind”. Already it sounds happier with a bigger heap of optimism, and is a top draw album opener. The caressing melodies of ‘Falling Into The Sun’, and the slow burner ‘I Will Love You’, plus the return of some lightly applied saxophone (provided by Stephen Black) on ‘See The Light’ are other key highlights.
Time as a continuous process is celebrated with the passing of the seasons in the closing repeated refrain on the ease and flow of ‘Tired Of Being Alone.’ All the evidence suggests the band are adapting alright to changes and they are settling into their post Gerard life. They still sound a bit bruised with traces of melancholy floating around, but there are also many positive lines throughout that indicate things are looking, or at the very least, hoping they will be brighter days ahead ‘found my feet, it’s time to leave this dead-end street’ where the guitars chime and glimmer on ‘Back To The Light and in ‘It’s Alright’ informs “City street to country lane, life has taken hold again”.
Nothing Lasts Forever is a perfect accompaniment to a weekend morning waking up with the morning brew to embrace the day ahead, and a reminder to oneself to live in the moment. And for this, Teenage Fanclub, I thank you.
