Teenage Fanclub mix old and new for Festival show

Date Published: {J}

Teenage Fanclub’s show at the Radisson is one of the musical highlights at this year’s Arts Festival. The veteran Scottish band make play their first ever Galway show on Thursday, July 22. Teenage Fanclub released their first album A Catholic Education in 1990 and have since built up a loyal, cult following.

Gerry Love, bassist and singer with the group, is in chipper form as he reflects on Teenage Fanclub’s career and their impressive new album. Shadows is a record that reprises the band’s winning combination of Byrds-like harmonies and jangly guitars.

“We recorded it quite a long time ago,” says Gerry. “It seems to be getting a decent reception across the board. It’s kind of hard to gauge records when you’re making them; some people like that sound at the moment so that’s helpful for us.”

Teenage Fanclub started recording Shadows in 2008, so why did it only seeing the light of day this year?

“A few things have changed – we have new management,” Gerry explains. “In the past we would just prepared to bang the record out, [but] they’re taking a wider view of it – trying to fit it into some sort of strategy.”

Having been signed to major labels like Creation and Geffen in the past, Teenage Fanclub are used to playing the waiting game in music.

The group is blessed with songwriters. Gerry, Norman Blake and Raymond McGinley all sing and write songs for the group. You might think that this would create tension but Gerry enjoys the band’s unusual dynamic.

“In terms of recording for an album, I think we’re happy to only have to present four or five ideas,” he says. “I don’t think any of us are extremely prolific so it’s not like there’s somebody turning up with 15 songs.”

The members of Teenage Fanclub also like to push themselves when it comes to making records – they only write songs when they are in the studio.

“That’s the thing that holds it up a lot of the time,” Gerry admits. “If we were totally prepared, we’d make records very quickly. Apart from the very first record, we’ve always been in the process of writing while we were in the studio. We always say, ‘next time we’ll have everything prepared’ but we’ve never really learned how to do that!”

In 1994, Teenage Fanclub recorded Fallin’, a collaboration with legendary hip-hop group De La Soul. This unlikely partnership featured on the soundtrack for a film called Judgement Night – but the band nearly ended up working with a different artist.

“That was an amazing experience – it was like Jim’ll Fix It or something,” Gerry says. “It was such an unlikely partnership. This guy phoned us up and said ‘do you fancy working with PM Dawn?’ and we said ‘am . . . yeah, maybe’. A couple of days later he said PM Dawn can’t make it, how about De La Soul.’ We said ‘you must be joking!

“We were makinga record just outside Manchester and they flew over from Long Island,” he adds. “It was kind of surreal but there wasn’t much time for pleasantries; we had two days to come up this song that didn’t exist when they arrived. Just to watch how those guys worked was amazing.”

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.