They are playing for more than teens!
The Scottish band Teenage Fanclub has been rocking out since 1989, building a small a small but fiercely loyal fan base in the United States — and among critics everywhere. The band, which will play the Music Hall of Williamsburg on Oct. 16 in support of it’s latest album “Here,” is known for its mix of soaring, close vocal harmonies and shaggy, distorted guitar lines. And though the five-member band has three songwriters — guitarists Raymond McGinley and Norman Blake, and bassist Gerard Love — they have been playing together so long that the tunes always mesh into a cohesive whole on the record, said one member.
“It’s not like each of us sitting down and thinking, ‘Okay, this is a Teenage Fanclub song, so I’m going to make it a certain way,’ ” said McGinley. “But we know what we’re working toward, what the destination is.”
The band’s long-held practice of recording basic track with “all of us playing together at the same time” contributes to the unified sound, he said, no matter who wrote the song they are playing. And all the members contribute to the final version.
“When we’re in the studio, we usually haven’t finished writing the songs,” McGinley explained. So the shared environment of the recording studio is where the finishing touches are applied to the music. That shared experience of “filling in the blanks” gives the signature Teenage Fanclub sound to the group’s recordings.
It has been six years since the band’s last album, but McGinley dismissed the notion that the band members have been idle — in fact, recording sessions for “Here” started in 2013. Over the last few years, McGinley has also recorded an album with folk-rockers Snowgoose, and he said that the other members have kept busy as well.
“Our drummer, Francis MacDonald, manages Camera Obscura and the Vaselines,” said McGinley. “So it doesn’t really feel like we were hanging around.”
Teenage Fanclub at Music Hall of Williamsburg (66 N. Sixth St. between Wythe and Kent avenues in Williamsburg, www.music
