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Scotland’s most reliable sunshine! Teenage Fanclub’s greatest songs – ranked
As their album Grand Prix turns 30, we rate the standout moments from a group Kurt Cobain called ‘the best in the world’
The chaotic early Fanclub had their moments, but the release of The Concept introduced the TFC that Kurt Cobain called “the best band in the world”: the guitars are still unruly with feedback, but the melodies are amped up to match them, the vocal harmonies are luscious, the lyrics smart and witty. Star Sign initially sounds like a Sonic Youth-y drone experiment – over a minute of beat-less monotone guitar – before exploding into life: an irresistible tune built around the kind of descending-but-uplifting chord sequences that helped define glam rock, and a lyric that keeps indifferently shrugging “big deal” in a way that’s very early 90s. Songs from Northern Britain’s jewel, and – perhaps – TFC’s essence distilled: plangent guitars, sunlit harmonies, a melody the Fifth Dimension-era Byrds would have been proud of, life’s simple pleasures unfashionably hymned at the height of Britpop’s gruesome cokey grandiosity (“here is a sunrise – ain’t that enough?”).
Or read this on The Guardian