Teenage Fanclub, The Academy, May 30th

There were mixed review from Peter and Eilish on Teenage Fanclub’s new album and here’s Dan’s thoughts on their gig at The Academy. Were you there? What did you think?

- Darren

It’s not easy to get moving on a Sunday evening, but with tickets to see Teenage Fanclub in the intimate surroundings of The Academy, Dublin, I managed to drag myself off the couch. By 9pm The Academy was absolutely (claustrophobically even) jam packed with an audience of mostly 30-somethings and Teenage Fanclub hit the stage to huge applause. What struck me most about the bands’ middle-age appearance, was you could be forgiven for thinking someone had made four clones your geography school teacher and ushered them on stage, perhaps to teach you the importance of columbus cloud formations through the medium of song.

Unfortunately during the first few songs it became apparent we’d been lumped with a tone deaf sound engineer. The vocals were buried under bottom-end-bass murkiness, so much so that the sound engineer tried to compensate by pushing the volume on the mics, which just lead shrieks of feedback. Truly amateur stuff. I’d been to The Academy recently to see The Lemonheads and the sound was crystal clear, so this was a disappointment.

However (and I think this is testament to Teenage Fanclub’s polished performance) the songs were still very much enjoyable. Great catchy guitar riffs and beautiful melodies; Teenage Fanclub have their delivery down to a fine art. Their sound is clean but at the same time it’s easy to see why Kurt Cobain considered them one of his favourite bands, their chord formations are beautifully clever and instantly accessible, meaning you can sing along even if you don’t know the song.  If you’ve never heard them, imagine someone put Crowded House at one end of the Large Hadron Collider and The  Byrds at the other, then smashed their molecules into each other, the resulting gooey hybrid would be Teenage Fanclub.

Surprisingly, exactly on the 60 minute mark, the band finished up, coming back a few minutes later for a perfunctory 10 minute encore. With a total gig time of around 70 mins, I was a bit pissed off. Perhaps I’ve been spoiled by too many 3 hour Springsteen concerts, but I expect more than that, especially from a band with a 20 year back catalogue. I guess in their defence the tickets were only €25 (2 pints however, cost a pricey €10.50 on the night) but if I get my ass off the couch on a Sunday night, I expect at least a 2 hour gig!

The short set, cramped surroundings and dreadful sound quality, means at best I could only say this gig was average, which is a shame because the band played beautifully.

Teenage Fanclub’s new album, Shadows, is available now.

(Is it just me? What do you think? What’s the minimum length a gig should be?)