Pitchfork

[Posted Tuesday, September 23rd, 2003 05:00:00 Pitchfork Central Time]

Teenage Fanclub, purveyors of epic Scottish power pop (bet you never thought you'd see all of those words in the same sentence in that particular order) are releasing a career-spanning retrospective, Four Thousand, Seven Hundred and Sixty-Six Seconds: A Short Cut to Teenage Fanclub on Jetset Records, due out on October 7th. The album will include an overview of the band's six-album oeuvre, along with three new tracks, "The World'll Be OK," "Empty Space," and "Did I Say." Tracklist:

01 The Concept
02 Ain't That Enough
03 The World'll Be OK
04 Everything Flows
05 Star Sign
06 Mellow Doubt
07 I Need Direction
08 About You
09 What You Do To Me
10 Empty Space
11 Sparky's Dream
12 I Don't Want Control Of You
13 Hang On
14 Did I Say
15 Don't Look Back
16 Your Love Is The Place Where I Come From
17 Neil Jung
18 Radio
19 Dumb Dumb Dumb
20 Planets
21 My Uptight Life

You will note that we are calling this a retrospective and not a greatest -hits album because, well, Teenage Fanclub haven't really had any hits, as such. In fact, some might say that they're one of the most criminally overlooked bands of our times. Beginning in 1990 with A Catholic Education, the Fanclub proceeded to pick up Big Star's mantle and run with it all the way to lamentable obscurity (although there was a brief flirtation with fame in the UK with Bandwagonesque and its subsequent releases), bouncing from label to label, major and minor, including Matador, Sony, Geffen, Thirsty Ear and Alternative Tentacles, to name but a handful.

Among other things, Teenage Fanclub were notable for the presence of three equally gifted and timesharing singer/songwriters in Norman Blake, Gerard Love and Raymond McGinley. And while there were always more hooks and harmonies than you could shake a stick at, and an accompanying boatload of critical acclaim (Spin magazine called Bandwagonesque "the greatest album made by white people in ten years"), commercial breakthrough just never quite happened. It so never happened, in fact, that as recently as 2002 the band hooked up with Jad Fair and made a really weird album called Words of Wisdom and Hope that we're still scratching our heads about. And it looks like Jetset will also be just a temporary port-of-call, as label representatives tell us that they have no plans for Teenage Fanclub releases beyond this compilation. But there's a special place in rock 'n' roll heaven for the Fanclub, of that you can be sure.