As much as it's a cliché, a midlife crisis can be a real bitch. All that time that once seemed so limitlessly ahead of you becomes something you can quantify—you're halfway there. It's a tough feeling to come to grips with, especially because being 35 to 40 is hardly old. Teenage Fanclub dealt with this as gracefully as one could imagine on their last album, 2005's Man-Made. Songs like "Cells" and "Time Fades" were frank and poignant without ever resorting to cheap melancholy.
And so, with that out of the way, we get the Fannies' first LP as true gentlemen: Shadows. Despite its title, it appears that the three Scots who form the band's songwriting core—Norman Blake, Gerard Love and Raymond McGinley—are anything but troubled by their station. It doesn't hurt that TFC have always made music that was in a position to age gracefully. Even with the occasionally profane choruses on their debut, A Catholic Education, or the dark-lord-invoking feedback of Bandwagonesque's "Satan", their music has always been about the supremacy of harmony and the beauty of melody. Their first single, 1990's "Everything Flows", was a perfect initial mission statement—an elegant instant classic that sang of the virtues of letting go and accepting the mysteries of life for what they are.
Twenty years later, and this philosophy is effectively reprised on Shadows' opener, "Sometimes I Don't Need To Believe In Anything". The song coasts and purrs like a well maintained antique roadster for an afternoon spin on a coastal highway, and its message is simple and, well, uplifting. Certainly for some, this laidback, congenial approach might reek of general wussiness and a lack of creative momentum. Fair enough: through and through, this is easy-listening for the aging hipster set. That said, it's hardly easy being as consistently gorgeous as Teenage Fanclub have been these last two decades, and if their message seems lightweight at a glance, the comfort and joy it brings is anything but.
These Scottish vets may be starting their third decade much as they started their first, but I, for one, wouldn't have it any other way. I believe in Teenage Fanclub.