Teenage Fanclub Return

Veteran indie rockers Teenage Fanclub will release their first studio album in five years on June 7th. Titled Man-Made, the band's Merge Records debut was recorded in Chicago with Tortoise mastermind John McEntire.

"The title came to Raymond [McGinley] in a morning dream just before he woke up," explains co-frontman Norman Blake. "He said he opened his eyes and it was written on the ceiling or something. I'm not entirely sure if it connects to the album, but we just felt it sounded good. And I suppose the record was man-made -- it was just the four of us and John."

Assembled from tunes penned by the group's three singer-songwriters -- Blake, McGinley and Gerard Love -- the melodic guitar pop of Man-Made asserts that the Scottish quartet's sound (which is rounded out by drummer Francis MacDonald) has evolved only slightly in its sixteen-year history. New numbers such as "Falling Leaves," "All in My Mind" and "Flowing" easily match the Big Star-meets-Neil Young allure of Fanclub favorites "Everything Flows" (from 1990's A Catholic Education), "Starsign" (off of '91's Bandwagonesque) and "About You" (1995's Grand Prix).

"With each album, we'll do four songs each and it works out really well for us," Blake explains. "We'll whittle it down to our four best, and that's it. I recognize it's a bit unusual to have three songwriters in one band, but there's never any animosity or anything."

Teenage Fanclub laid down tracks in February and July of last year at McEntire's studio. "We certainly experienced the extremes of Chicago weather-wise," Blake says. The band packed lightly, and had to call on a Windy City friend, Wilco frontman Jeff Tweedy, for help.

"Being cheap Scots, we didn't bring much equipment because we were worried about being charged excess baggage," Blake says, laughing. "Our penny-pinching almost got the best of us because we realized we had a song that needed two acoustic guitars. I got in touch with Tweedy, and he very kindly donated another one for the sessions."

Teenage Fanclub, who hit the road with everybody from Nirvana to Weezer in the Nineties, plan to launch a U.S. tour in July. "We should have learned the songs by that point," Blake cracks.

As for how he and his mates have stayed afloat for so long, Blake has a simple explanation: "We never look more than three months ahead. We just like things to happen. It's been sixteen years of meandering our way through."