Teenage Fanclub: Nothing Lasts Forever (Vinyl LP)

Lead off single 'Foreign Land' is the opening track on Teenage Fanclub’s eleventh full studio album Nothing Lasts Forever. That track - and the rest of this beautifully rich and melodic album - is the sound of a season’s end, of the last warm days of the year while nights begin to draw in and thoughts become reflective and more than a little melancholy.

That reflection is everywhere on the record, whether on the autumnal folk rock of 'Tired Of Being Alone' that repositions Laurel Canyon to somewhere deep in the heart of the Wye Valley, the William Blake quoting 'Self-Sedation' or on the song that preceded Nothing Lasts Forever’s completion, last year’s 'I Left A Light On', where a spark of hope is kept alight at the end of a relationship.

One of the recurring themes on Nothing Lasts Forever is light, as a both a metaphor for hope and as an ultimate destination further down the road. Although the band’s songwriters Norman Blake and Raymond McGinley found themselves touching on similar themes, it was pure coincidence.

The band recorded Nothing Lasts Forever - Blake, McGinley along with Francis Macdonald on drums, Dave McGowan on bass and Euros Childs on keyboards during an intense ten-day period in the bucolic Welsh countryside at Rockfield Studios, near Monmouth in late August. You can hear the effect of that environment on the record - it’s full of soft breeze, wide skies, beauty and space.

One of the most striking lyrics on the record is on the closing track 'I Will Love You'. A gorgeous seven minute almost Kosmiche acoustic daydream drone, it looks to a point beyond the fury and polarisation of our modern discourse, to a time when “the bigots are gone/after they apologise/for all the harm that they’ve done”. Looking for positives while faced with the grim realities of the 21st century feels very Teenage Fanclub - a band who’ve been a force for good for over three decades and who can effortlessly turn melancholy into glorious, chiming harmony.

Black vinyl version.

1. Foreign Land
   
2. Tired Of Being Alone
   
3. I Left A Light On
   
4. See The Light
   
5. It’s Alright
   
6. Falling Into The Sun
   
7. Self-Sedation
   
8. Middle Of My Mind
   
9. Back To The Light
   
10. I Will Love You