Download: Teenage Fanclub, ‘Baby Lee’
Kevin Bronson on
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It’s always fun to banter with longtime fans of the iconic (Can I call them that? Well, I just did) jangle-pop band Teenage Fanclub. They’re the ones who not only love the warm embrace of the Glaswegian quartet’s guitars, but have strong opinions on which of the band’s three songwriters – Norman Blake, Gerard Love or Raymond McGinley – pens the better tunes. Today, Teenage Fanclub announced that it will release a new album, “Shadows,” in June on Merge; it’s their first album since 2005’s “Man-Made,” which split the songwriting credits evenly over 12 tracks. And the band dispatched this gem, which feels to me like a Norman Blake song. (Am I right?)
||| Download: “Baby Lee”
||| Also: If you weren’t conscious in 2005, here’s Blake’s “It’s All in My Mind”
it certainly is a norman blake song – and what a wonderful one!
considering the tracklist consists of yet another 12 songs, i assume that they have split songwriting credits evenly again. i’m very thrilled to hear which tfc member has the 4 best ones this time!
i’ve found live versions of “sometimes…” (love), “the fall” (mcginley) and “when i still have thee” (blake) on youtube, they are all pretty good.
Cool. Beleaguered British premier Gordon Brown will be happy about that. Or maybe not: as Norman said in 2008, “We met Gordon Brown once, in Inverness. He told us he liked Big Star. I think he’d been briefed.”