Teenage Fanclub: Make It Last Forever
Talking with group co-founder Raymond McGinley about their shimmering new album
Calling from his Glasgow, Scotland home, Teenage Fanclub co-vocalist/guitarist Raymond McGinley admits that he’s trying not to care too much about what fans will think of the beloved alternative rock band’s latest album, Nothing Last Forever.
“As soon as you start thinking about what other people might want from you, I think you’ve kind of failed a bit,” he says. “I think you have to give people what they don’t know they want yet. I’d rather someone make music for their own concept of what they want to do, rather than the audience’s concept.”
That said, Nothing Last Forever will likely satisfy anyone who has admired Teenage Fanclub during their three-decade career. This is their eleventh studio album, and it’s brimming with the kind of swirling, intricate guitar parts and evocative lyricism that that have long been hallmarks of their songcraft. Given that the members write songs separately and then bring to the band, McGinley says that even they can never predict how an album will turn out, and this one is no exception.
“Since the band started, we never had any themes – certainly not consciously, certainly not collectively,” McGinley says. “We don’t really talk to each other in that way, ever. We accept that whatever anyone in this band is doing, that’s what it’s going to be. I don’t think we like to get bogged down by too much conscious concept. It’s not like any of us is this Svengali telling everyone what to do. The cohesion comes from the humanity of everyone in the band. In terms of interacting musically with each other, we start doing it, and it just happens. We like the fact that it’s beyond language, a lot of the time.”
That said, McGinley concedes that, with retrospect, there are some identifiable ideas running through this album, particularly when it comes to their choice for the title: “It’s kind of funny, the idea of a band that’s been around for nearly 35 years calling an album Nothing Lasts Forever – we’re still here, but we won’t be here forever. None of us will be here forever.
“Literally nothing lasts forever,” he continues. “I think it’s good to live your life acknowledging that it’s not going to last forever. The good things won’t last forever, and the bad things don’t last forever, either, hopefully. It sounds kind of negative, [but] having that mindset makes you do stuff today instead of thinking you’ll do it tomorrow.”
The COVID pandemic really drove that concept home, McGinley says. “You think, ‘Maybe we’ll do that next year’ – and then there’s a whole year where you couldn’t really do anything.” When they released their last album, Endless Arcade, in 2021, pandemic lockdowns prevented them from touring properly to support it, aside from a handful of shows. At that time, McGinley says, “I think we all felt really depressed.” After all, previous experience had taught them to expect that once an album came out, “you immediately go out in the world playing shows, meeting people, and that feels like the whole thing has come full circle.”
Fortunately, the COVID situation has improved enough that they won’t have to go through that same discouraging experience again with Nothing Lasts Forever. This time, they’ve planned an extensive tour across Europe, Japan, Australia, and New Zealand, starting about a week after the album comes out and continuing on into 2024.
“And you think, ‘Well, that’s the way it’s meant to be!’” McGinley says.
This happy realization, in turn, has lead McGinley and his bandmates to step up their output. “We recently have been thinking it’s been too long between records,” he says. “In the ’90s, we were busy all the time. Somehow I think that’s better. So we’re in the mindset now that we’re wanting to get on with it whenever we can.”
McGinley says that it’s easy to feel motivated because they’re able to make music on their own terms. “You’ve achieved success, I think, at the point where you’re doing what you want to do,” he says, adding that being in bands is the only job he’s ever held, aside from when he was a paper boy. “Almost everyone that tries to be a musician and make money at it can’t do it. I’m not saying that we’ve managed to do that because we’re great; I think we’ve managed to do it because we decided to do it and commit to it, and also because we’ve been fairly lucky. We make enough money to survive, and we have done for thirty years, so we’re quite happy about that.”
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Their successful career trajectory started when McGinley and co-vocalist/guitarist Norman Blake began playing together in 1986 in a group named The Boy Hairdressers. They went on to form Teenage Fanclub in 1989, releasing their debut album, A Catholic Education, the following year. They earned international success with their third album, Bandwagonesque (1991), and have remained highly respected (especially in the U.K.) ever since.
After all this time, not much has changed, as far as the band’s inner workings go.
“When we work together, it’s the same as it was when we made A Catholic Education,” McGinley says. “I think we like to trust our instincts. We try not to second guess ourselves by comparing ourselves to something else, or trying to make it sound like something else. We just try to filter out whatever restrictions you might place on yourself by trying to conform to expectations.”
And, he adds, they are firmly focused on the future, instead of dwelling on their past accomplishments.
“We feel lucky that we can do what we want, but we don’t really spend any time thinking of having any kind of legacy,” McGinley says. “We don’t really celebrate anniversaries. We don’t see ourselves as a heritage act. We never split up and got back together again ten years later, so we didn’t really have time to be outside of it. It’s just this thing that we do – this is our life.”
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