Review: Teenage Fanclub at Astor Theatre
Teenage Fanclub at Astor Theatre
w/ Euro Childs
Tuesday, March 5, 2024
Teenage Fanclub holds a special place in many an indie (now grown-up) kid’s heart. They emerged in the early 1990s as part of a wave of guitar-driven indie rock outfits. One could even say they were grunge-leaning, with a heavy guitar sound and hooks upon riffs. Kurt Cobain famously said that he thought they were the best band in the world.
Thirty-five years later, they are still going strong, having released their 11th album this year, Nothing Lasts Forever. For the punters heading to the Astor on Tuesday night, it was a chance to see a classic indie rock band and, as we learned, not necessarily just about reliving the past.
First up was the rather delightful Euros Childs from Wales, indeed—from Old South Wales, as he explained to the crowd that was beginning to gather in the standing area of the theatre. For one person and an electric keyboard, he made quite an impressive racket with his surrealistic ballads and clean melodies as he gleefully pounded the keys and crooned away. Confident and with a smart sense of humour, stately folk songs such as Virgin Moon (about a scenario where Richard Branson has bought the moon) and Bits of You (describing a leprosy-like conundrum) had a dash of vaudeville with some theatrics thrown in. Childs would later shift from front and centre to the back of stage right to play keys for Teenage Fanclub for their set.
Teenage Fanclub last visited Perth in 2019, the first tour without founding member Gerard Love, who left owing to the demands of touring. Tried and tested leader Norman Blake and fellow lead guitarist and singer Raymond McGinley swapped singing duties throughout the evening, with the band ably backing them up. The three-way dynamic of years past was missed a bit, but the back and forth from Blake and McGinley still made for a largely compelling show.
Part of Teenage Fanclub’s appeal has been their mastery of rock guitar styles, like the overdriven sound of The Cabbage and the slow, majestic grooves of Gene Clark, putting them squarely in the indie rock camp. But they also drew inspiration from Alex Chilton and Big Star from the 1970s, mining that territory of saturated guitar progressions that tug on the heartstrings with a yearning that makes you want to shed a tear or two. But over the years, this aesthetic has given way to an intricate, jangly Byrds-like feel that emanates from a more traditional UK folk balladeer sound. The latter was always there but is more prominent now that the fuzz pedals have largely been retired.
The classic Teenage Fanclub sound from the 1990s albums was on display with songs like The Concept (albeit with a pacier final section), Alcoholiday, and What You Do To Me from their breakthrough 1991 LP Bandwagonesque. About You from Grand Prix and It’s a Bad World from Songs from Northern Britain also got an airing, with a bit of bopping along from the crowd and spirited applause upon hearing these classics played expertly by the band.
Blake announced to the crowd early on that since it’s been five years since the last tour, they would focus on material “regrettably” (he joked sardonically) from the last two albums—a statement clearly aimed at managing the expectations of people who may have come for a parade of 1990s hits.
Songs from the latest album Nothing Lasts Forever featured prominently, with pacey single Foreign Land and others such as Middle of My Mind and Back to the Light seeing McGinley and Blake trading off just as for the LP. The later material, such as Endless Arcade, was often greeted with only a smattering of applause, but the band soldiered through. In some ways, because the older fans were not familiar with the newer material, they could appreciate the more recent songs on their own merit in a live setting and applaud according to how the song hit them. Perhaps with the suggestion in the title of the most recent album, the band clearly enjoyed playing the fresher material rather than reaching into the bag of hits, but this left the crowd restless at times.
There were some conspicuous absences, such as Starsign and anything from the Thirteen LP, but with so much material written over the years and a penchant for playing newer material, a few casualties were inevitable. After 30 years, you’d hardly expect them to bust into a rendition of the thrashy Satan.
Blake did all the chatting between songs and had a charming and honest style of banter, although explaining to everyone that the encore was coming, so they were going to walk off and pretend to come back to rapturous applause and play four more songs, and that would be the end of the show, was probably a bit over the top.
Wanting to give the fans what they wanted, the first song became the last song. Everything Flows from 1989, their first single, was played faithfully with heavy guitars and tremolo from McGinley, and the whole venue locked into the heavy repetitive groove, releasing the tension for those yearning for the earlier material and giving fans something to hum about on the way home.
PAUL DOUGHTY