Teenage Fanclub: Howdy! : Music Reviews : Rolling Stone

Album Reviews

Teenage Fanclub have always had a golden touch with simple, open guitar chords and classic pop progressions, a la Alex Chilton and the Beatles. But a few albums ago, on Grand Prix, they turned off the distortion, upped the harmonies and made a creative breakthrough: Now every song was a ray of brilliant, clear sunshine over the calm Scottish landscape. Howdy! -- released more than a year ago in Britain and only now available here -- is typically sunny Fanclub, yet more nuanced and colorful than anything the band has done before. The arrangements balance ringing guitars with organ, keyboards and occasional strings and horns, intimately and economically. Every instrument has something important to say. And Raymond McGinley, Norman Blake and Gerard Love have become a real songwriting triumvirate -- they split the album's twelve tracks almost equally, exploring similar themes of humility in the face of spiritual crisis from three distinct perspectives. From "I Need Direction" to "If I Never See You Again," the dominant theme is an earnest quest to find love and a place to call one's own. But they've never sounded more comfortable and in control.

BEN SISARIO
(February 11, 2002)