North stars

Falling in love with TFC

by Stephanie Zacharek

The great thing about the Scottish outfit Teenage Fanclub is that even though they don't sell many records in this country, they never sound as if they needed anybody's pity. They're like a nice guy who can't afford to take his girl out to a fancy restaurant -- so he spends his last nickel on Chinese food for two, his treat, and it ends up meaning more.

If anything, the restless pop romanticism of Songs from Northern Britain (the band's fifth CD and their first on Creation/Columbia) makes them seem more resolute than ever. Here their harmonies, their guitar lines, are often polished smooth like a worry stone; of all their records, this one has the softest edges yet. But though Teenage Fanclub (who join Radiohead and the Dandy Warhols this Saturday at Harborlights Pavilion) show more discipline than ever in songwriting craftsmanship and execution, they show more passion, too -- and this from an outfit that has always worn its heart on its sleeve anyway. If Songs from Northern Britain doesn't end up being their big breakout album -- and it deserves to be -- it's at least a stellar example of how a band can "mature" and actually gain momentum instead of losing it.

This is an album in love with the US South. Time and again the harmonies suggest nothing so much as Gram Parsons-era Byrds. And Teenage Fanclub have never tried to hide how deeply in love they are with Big Star (they named their third album Thirteen, after one of Alex Chilton's most beloved songs). Their openness about their pop influences has sometimes caused them to be branded as nothing more than a Big Star tribute band.

But few bands are capable of writing songs that consistently sound so distinct and whole: the tracks on a Teenage Fanclub album never slide into each other like the layers of a runny parfait. And though the songwriting trio of bassist Gerard Love and guitarists Raymond McGinley and Norman Blake (the line-up is rounded out by drummer Paul Quinn) nod to their references all the time, they never ape them. There's nothing wrong with sending the occasional billet-doux to a rock-and-roll idol -- but Teenage Fanclub know that can never beat sending one to a real-live girl.

Maybe that's the key to Songs from Northern Britain: these fellows are so earnest, without being hopelessly loserish, that every track sounds as if it were written for that real-live girl. Most of the songs are about stumbling toward commitment -- not because the guy in question is terrified or ambivalent, but because he's so excited (and so nervous about messing up) that he's tripping over his own feet. What matters most is that he's up to the challenge. "And everyday I look in a different face/The feelings getting stronger with every embrace": the words show an expectation that the face of love will change, instead of a fear that it will -- a declaration that's sane, healthy, and impassioned at the same time.

Teenage Fanclub craft a lush, romantic sound to match. On "Planets," a soft arc of strings shimmers just behind the guitar and drums before gradually inching its way to the foreground. "You're my souvenir/Of my time on this sphere," the band sing on "It's a Bad World," against a wiry nimbus of guitars, like the whole wide world reflected in the shaggy head of a dandelion. And the vocal harmonies of "Ain't That Enough" seem like nothing so much as an embrace: sinfully silky and plush, they're a soft wrap of sound, a buttonless mohair coat.

The territory of love and desire is Teenage Fanclub's first and final frontier. "When I'm on my own, I'm lost in space/My freedom's a delusion/Your love is the place where I come from," they sing on "Your Love Is the Place Where I Come From," suggesting that each love can be its own planet, maybe even its own galaxy, a refuge from our sorry lives. And yet, almost paradoxically, the guitars here are at their Byrdsiest, countrified, as if they wanted nothing more than to touch down and put down roots in familiar soil. Maybe that's because for Teenage Fanclub, traveling to the far reaches of outer space is no adventure at all compared with the thrill of getting to know the girl next door. Whoever their mystery sweetheart of the rodeo is, she must feel that she's very well loved. n

Teenage Fanclub join Radiohead and the Dandy Warhols at Harborlights Pavilion this Saturday, August 23; call (617) 423-NEXT for tickets.