They weren't even teenagers when they first formed in Glasgow back in the late 80s, but this five-piece continue to exude a youthful-if-melancholic optimism via the uplifting guitar-driven music that has seen them survive an incredibly competitive industry, to the point now where there seems to be an even bigger surge of love for this modest band.

Having to take a back seat these last few years while they pursued separate projects, the band are back with their 10th studio album, and it seems that they have been badly missed, as so many of their contemporaries are finding out. The internet and global communications have helped of course, but it is the warming familiarity of Teenage Fanclub's sound that provides comfort and a sense of stability for many, particularly for those who have grown up with their music by their side. For many of them, they travelled with the band as they wrote about the emotional ups and downs of moving from adolescence into adulthood, and continue to do so; the band again looking into their souls, for meaning and direction as they enter their 50s.

Despite the fact that the three core members divvy up the songwriting duties evenly (four songs each), as they have done since 97s Songs From Northern Britian, this is only their third album since 2000’s Howdy, and their first since 2010's Shadows, but it seems that their decades-long relationship requires them to get it together every now and then and do what they so patently love to do, make music.

And lovely, airy music it often is; from the typically mid-tempo sunny and ringing guitars of ‘I'm In Love’ and ‘Live In The Moment’ to the open-hearted and melody-rich and string-infused ‘The Darkest Part of the Night’, there's a melancholy glow to much of Here. The full of lyrics that are simple yet life-affirming and/or questioning, whether about love and relationships in general, or about pulling through, helped along by those soft-yet-rich west coast-style vocal harmonies, and the occasional distorted solo guitar burst, such as on the rhythmically mellow ‘I Have Nothing More To Say’.

And their on-going love of psychedelic pop and all things mid-late 60s (and early 70s) comes through almost everywhere, on tracks such as the driving ‘Thin Air’, which features some backwards sounding guitar, the plaintive ‘I Was Beautiful When I Was Alive’, and the woozy sparkle of ‘Steady State’.

On occasion they can sound a little bland, a little too easy-going musically speaking, but beneath the surface there's always a hint of darkness, a tinge of sadness and an edge that gives the band a rounded, mature sound; confident yet fragile at times, with themselves and the world. But soldier on they must, having never quite scaled the heights of their much bigger contemporaries Nirvana/Dave Grohl and Oasis, who have all expressed a love for the band (they were specifically invited by Grohl to support his Foo Fighters last year at Old Trafford).

"You came to me with your arms open wide," Norman Blake sings on the opener 'I'm I Love'. It seems many of us continue to want to do just that.
Jeff Hemmings

See our spotlight of the week on Teenage Fanclub here: http://brightonsfinest.com/html/index.php/spotlight/1681-teenage-fanclub