Harmony-pop lover DENIS SEMCHENKO chats to RAYMOND MCGINLEY of TEENAGE FANCLUB about the passing of time, the Fannies’ creative dynamic and the singer/guitarist’s favourite moments on new album Shadows.

Five years after the release of the understated Man-Made, Scottish power-pop stalwarts Teenage Fanclub have made a glorious comeback with Shadows – a mature, melody-dappled record that’s every bit worthy of being filed next to their classic triptych of Bandwagonesque, Grand Prix and Songs From Northern Britain.

Having started out in the wake of the fey C86 movement, the Glasgow four-piece struck upon a golden formula – alternately jangly/crunchy guitars, lilting major/minor chord changes and Norman Blake, Raymond McGinley and Gerard Love’s seamless vocal harmonies – on their second album, 1991’s radiant Bandwagonesque. The immaculate, effortlessly melodic singles The Concept, What You Do To Me and Star Sign hit college radio stations, abundant critical praise and “album of the year” nods ensued, Kurt Cobain declared Teenage Fanclub his most favourite band in the world ... the four-piece seemed to be destined for big things.

Then the proverbial dip happened: 1993’s grungy Thirteen failed to repeat its predecessor’s success. Lengthy and with only occasional dashes of semi-ramshackle charm espoused by debut LP A Catholic Education, the record effectively sunk and the band members themselves slated it. Two years later, the marvellous return-to-form Gran Prix straightened things out and 1997’s Songs From Northern Britain saw Blake, McGinley and Love at their respective songwriting peaks. The patented melodic and lyrical sunshine was all-encompassing and irresistible.

That was the Fannies in the ‘90s. Come the new millennium, another setback followed in the shape of the poorly-marketed Howdy! 2002’s Words Of Wisdom And Hope – a collaboration with Half Japanese’s Jad Fair – similarly failed to resonate and 2005’s fan-oriented Man-Made, while a solid record, was still far from being a significant success. Seemingly forgotten by the mainstream in the new times but still firmly possessing “it”, the Glasgewians did what they always did best – stick to their guns and record a better album.

Essentially an amalgam of classic pop/rock’s big ‘B’-s – The Beatles, The Beach Boys, The Birds, Big Star – the Fannies’ expertly-honed musical template runs rich on their ninth (or tenth, if you count 1991’s deleted The King) album Shadows. Long due for release, the twelve-track LP brims with “grower” quality, the familiar husky/chiming voices soaring above the unhurried strumming and silvery jingle-jangle.

“We started recording the album in the summer of 2008 – around August – and we’d have a three-week session, then get together again and have another three-week session,” lead guitarist/singer McGinley recounts in his calm Scottish-gentleman voice. “The record was nearly finished in 2008 but it’s taken a while to get it together, with various little bits and pieces of music being shuffled over. So the record took maybe six months to make and the lacquering took three months or so, but it took a year to release it for some reasons that I can’t really remember.”

Now that Shadows is well and truly out, are the Fannies planning to tour it in Australia, I wonder.

“Yeah, definitely,” McGinley replies. “We’re looking at the best time and things like that but ... yeah, absolutely. Obviously I’m not sure when exactly we’re going to be there, but Down Under is definitely on our list. It’s been a long time.”

Time flies – has 2005 really been that long ago? It sometimes feels like only a couple years back, I detour into wistful observation.

“As we get older, it feels more like that,” McGinley ponders. “I think when you’re twelve years old, five years seems like a lot longer time, but these days, it doesn’t seem quite so long.”

Two of Shadows’ finest moments – the instant-classic first, Norman Blake-penned single Baby Lee and the unusually guitar-less Dark Clouds – feature the tender vocals of (now-defunct Welsh psych-folkers) Gorky’s Zygotic Mynci’s Euros Childs.

“We’ve known Euros for a while and him and Norman have been recording an album together [as the duo Jonny In Edinburgh] that’s going to come out later this year,” McGinley says. “Norman was thinking that someone could do the high voice and all sorts of piano as well ... it was good fun.”

The idea of a primarily guitar-reliant band not using a single six-string on a particular track often works to a brilliant effect (see The Smiths’ Asleep and A Rush And Push And The Land Is Ours) – did the Fannies deliberately try the same trick on Dark Clouds? 

“Not originally – that song had guitars, but Euros took them off and played the piano,” McGinley responds with a chuckle. “Sometimes it’s good to do things like that; the song has started out as a guitar song, then it had the piano on it and then the guitars came off. I’m really glad we did it, even though it’s a bit unusual for us. I’m not sure how we’re going to play it live yet – either Norman is going to sing and play piano at the same time or someone else will play piano and he has to stand there like Frank Sinatra or something.”

The Fannies’ famed three-songwriter dynamic and distinct camaraderie means McGinley and bassist Gerard Love’s compositions comfortably sit next to those of chief tunesmith Blake on Shadows.

“When we say “We’re going to make a new record”, we’ll start writing with each other – someone will get an idea, then another person will get an idea and we’ll keep doing it until we have enough songs for the record,” Raymond modestly states. “So in the beginning, we’d start with nothing and work until we’ve got enough songs. [The songwriting dynamic] has probably changed a little – in the past, when we started an album, we’d be often starting from nothing, but we’d always have ideas... maybe that hasn’t exactly changed. From the new record, I like Dark Clouds – partly because it doesn’t have any guitars on it. I also like the song Into The City – it’s a great, complicated song with all those parts in it and everything ... it would be those two.”

As the title of one of Teenage Fanclub’s early iridescent highlights succinctly goes, everything flows.

SHADOWS is out now through Liberator Music. www.teenagefanclub.com

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