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Teenage Fanclub's last two records of the 1990s were both loaded with
impeccably crafted guitar pop that set about the task of eradicating
the discord and jagged Big Star-isms that made 1991's
Bandwagonesque both Spin's Album of the Year (over
milestones like Nirvana's Nevermind, Public Enemy's
Apocalypse 91...The Enemy Strikes Black, and My Bloody
Valentine's Loveless) and the standard to which the band is
still held today.
1995's Grand Prix is better than 1997's Songs From Northern
Britain, mostly on the strength of its songwriting — tracks
like the immortal "Sparky's Dream" are still compulsively listenable
today — but both are tuneful and worthy of your time. The same
holds true for Howdy!, finally released in the U.S. 14 months
after it first arrived in the UK to massive public indifference.
Maybe it was too unfashionable for the pop climate of the time, too
naïve for listeners who had gravitated to more confrontational
sounds. And maybe, for a pop album, it didn't have the requisite
pretty-boy frontmen on the cover that would have ensured maximum
product shift (for all the charm of their music, the members of
Teenage Fanclub are not gifted with enormous charisma). Or maybe it
was just bad luck; ironically, just as Howdy! was sinking down
the UK charts, British and American listeners were warming to the
sub-Fanclub wimp-pop of Travis and Coldplay, two groups that lack the
Fannies' exuberance and tend towards acoustic blandness.
Howdy! again delivers the well-polished guitar jangle and
three-part harmonies that have become the band's trademark, serving
them up here in four-minute bursts by the three songwriters, Gerard
Love, Raymond McGinley and Norman Blake. Love's "I Need Direction" is
a pure sugar rush, with ba-ba-ba background vocals and a soaring
chorus worth spending a week or two getting lost in ("I need the ways
and means to get through/ I need an open heart to look to/ Nobody
sees the same way I do/ I need direction to get through"); the
chiming guitars that surface 1:23 into McGinley's "Happiness" quickly
identify themselves as the addictive pop hooks of which the band
never seems to run short. And don't even get me started on the
stone-cold classic "Dumb Dumb Dumb," the home of the album's
signature couplet "And I find it hard to sleep/ Because I've sold
myself so cheap." Blake is credited with authorship on that one, no
surprise considering he's responsible for most of the band's best
songs over the years.
Worryingly, though, there are signs of a detrimental side effect of
this musical democracy and conservatism. There's an almost
pathological insistence here on consistency of guitar tone, to the
detriment of extended listening. The playing can be too tasteful, the
tempos rarely vary from a moderate stomp, and as a result any song
without a huge hook bleeds into the next. It's always pretty, but
overall, the allure is almost meretricious, considering four or five
songs provoke nothing beyond a pleasant ambivalence. It leaves me
wondering if a little more abandon wouldn't serve the lads well.
Their songs have the melodic character to withstand concessions to
experimentation and aggression, both of which might bring back some
of those bandwagon fans who deserted them years ago.
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