Teenage Fanclub

The Scottish indie survivors roll into Sala Moon on October 16 with a new album, three decades of songs and enough melodic ammunition to make Valencia forget about whatever the fuck it's supposed to be doing that Friday night.

Teenage Fanclub have been around long enough to have watched indie music become a religion, a fashion statement, a punchline, a marketing strategy and eventually something involving TikTok dances and men in bucket hats. Through all of it, they've largely done the same thing: picked up guitars and written ridiculously good songs.

And now they're coming to Sala Moon in Valencia on Friday, October 16. No nostalgia circus. No greatest-hits karaoke act desperately pretending it's still 1991. Teenage Fanclub arrive in Spain with a new record under their arm and a catalogue that could flatten most modern guitar bands without breaking a sweat.

The timing is particularly tasty. Their thirteenth studio album, Do Not Dare To Dream, lands on October 9 via Merge Records, meaning Valencia gets the band barely a week into the album's life. That's a pretty good position to be in. Because Teenage Fanclub aren't one of those bands wheeled out every few years to play the same old songs to an increasingly nostalgic audience. They're still making records, still touring and still finding new ways to make guitars sound like the best invention since somebody discovered electricity.

The story begins in Glasgow in the late '80s, when Norman Blake, Raymond McGinley and their various musical accomplices started building something that sounded simultaneously scruffy, noisy, melodic and gloriously out of step with the prevailing musical weather. Then came Bandwagonesque in 1991. Suddenly Teenage Fanclub were everywhere. “The Concept.” “Star Sign.” “What You Do To Me.”

Those songs didn't behave like conventional indie singles. They were loud enough to belong in the alternative-rock trenches but melodic enough to sneak into your head and refuse to leave. The guitars had fuzz, the harmonies had sunshine and underneath everything was a distinctly Scottish melancholy that stopped the whole thing becoming twee. Bandwagonesque became a landmark record and was even named album of the year by SPIN, beating some fairly serious competition.

Then came Grand Prix, Songs From Northern Britain and Howdy!, with Teenage Fanclub gradually developing their own peculiar brand of guitar pop: big melodies without arena-rock bullshit, emotional songs without theatrical misery and harmonies that could make even the most cynical bastard crack a smile.

The band became one of the great survivors of the '90s alternative explosion precisely because they never seemed particularly interested in playing the game. While everybody else was worrying about being cool, Teenage Fanclub were writing songs. And fucking good ones at that.

The current Teenage Fanclub line-up carries that history forward with Blake and McGinley at its core, alongside Euros Childs, Francis Macdonald and Dave McGowan.

The new album was recorded at Black Bay Studio on Scotland's remote Great Bernera island, which sounds like exactly the sort of place where a band could escape the noise of the modern music industry and get back to the important stuff: guitars, microphones, melodies and arguing about whether a fucking tambourine is actually necessary.

The early tracks from Do Not Dare To Dream suggest there isn't a radical departure waiting around the corner. Nor should there be. “Day In The Sun” and “There Was You” carry the familiar Teenage Fanclub DNA: chiming guitars, layered vocals, bittersweet lyrics and melodies that sound effortless until you try writing one yourself.

That's the trick. Teenage Fanclub make this shit sound easy.

Adding another layer of Scottish/Welsh indie weirdness to the evening is Euros Childs, the former Gorky's Zygotic Mynci frontman and a seriously underrated songwriter in his own right. Childs joins Teenage Fanclub for the Spanish dates apart from San Fernando and Zaragoza, giving Valencia a double dose of beautifully off-centre British songwriting before the main event arrives. Childs has always occupied his own little corner of the musical universe, somewhere between psychedelic folk, eccentric pop and the kind of songwriting that makes you wonder what was in the tea when the song was written.

The Valencia show takes place at Sala Moon, one of the city's established live rooms, with a capacity of roughly 950 people. And that's exactly where this gig belongs. Big enough to create serious noise, small enough that you're not watching the band through a phone screen from three streets away.

There is something particularly satisfying about seeing a band with this much history in a room where you can still see the whites of their eyes. Teenage Fanclub don't need a fucking spaceship production. Give them a stage, guitars, drums, microphones and a crowd who knows the words and you've basically got the machinery required.

Teenage Fanclub's Spanish tour runs through October, taking in a dozen dates before reaching Valencia and then Barcelona. By the time they arrive at Moon, they'll have already crossed half the country, carrying four decades of musical baggage and a brand-new record that refuses to sit quietly in the luggage compartment.

For Valencia, it's a chance to catch one of British indie's great survivors at close range. A band that came through the explosion of alternative rock, survived Britpop, watched grunge disappear, ignored countless musical trends and somehow emerged on the other side still sounding like Teenage Fanclub. Which, frankly, is more impressive than most rock-star reinventions.

For tickets and more information: Houston Party Music