Teenage Fanclub – Nothing Lasts Forever

Wait, I thought on their last album Teenage Fanclub were talking about life being an ‘Endless Arcade‘? Now it isn’t – and should we be worried? Well, as it turns out no more than usual. The Fannies second album since the departure of Gerard Love can lyrically at times feel like hearing the echoes from a therapist’s couch, but Nothing Lasts Forever is if anything sonically their most lightweight outing of all.

Co-songwriter Norman Blake has spoken about with admirable honesty about the impact of his marriage break up on his own work, but despite a trio of song titles here all including the word light in some way, his partner Raymond McGinley has dismissed the multiple references as merely coincidental. Instead, the pair have decided to embrace the future with middle-aged vigour, Blake chiming “The past’s a foreign land/I did my best you understand” on the opener Foreign Land.

Understandably perhaps, whilst circumstances in the background falter and change, the quintet’s core remains anchored in melody. But underneath the surface equally there are some interesting footnotes, Blake quoting a line clipped from a poem by his namesake William during Self Sedation and on the closer I Will Love You railing against the now emboldened bigots who are poisoning society.

Nothing Lasts Forever sees Teenage Fanclub roll with life’s slings and arrows the only way how, by crafting sublime music that by turn, gives them the optimism to keep on crafting sublime music.

You can read a full review here.