teenage fanclub/laura cantrell
july 13, 2001 • new york city ny


review: So I was supposed to be meeting up with this girl Alison, who, fantastically, is named after the Elvis Costello song, but she had it in her head that we were meeting up Saturday and not Friday. She gets my messages on her machine at 2:15 am and calls me on my mobile phone (yes, I relented and got one. Sorry, OK?) while I'm heading out from a brief visit to the Back Fence on Bleeker Street. But more of that later...

I manage to offload my spare ticket, no bother, and hang around in the venue reading the Village Voice while waiting for the honey-tonsilled Laura Cantrell to take the stage. There's a full-page munificent review of Nick Hornby's latest novel, with a photo of him in a Teenage Fanclub t-shirt. Surely a positive sign? Well, if these things make your day... Anyway, some English chap comes over and asks if he can borrow my paper. I show him Nick and lend him it. Turns out he's the drummer in a band called Retriever and used to drum in Nightnurse, whose ex-guitarist, Charlotte is now in Ash and goes out with Michael, the singer in Retriever. And they're friends with the Fanclub, whose touring (and of course, original) drummer, Francis Macdonald, is the man behind BMX Bandits, one of the all-time favorites of my mate Steve in Leeds, UK --- the drummer in Shuttlecock, my never-will-happen band. Oh, and Francis helped Laura Cantrell with the bridge of one of her new songs...

And a fine song it is, along with the rest of her set, largely drawn from her genius debut album "Not The Tremblin' Kind". Amiable, laidback, cool, resplendent in dark blue denim and knee-length skirt, Laura and her band (whose bassist, Jeremy, also plays in Retriever --- ah, pop is such an holistic creature) effortlessly convert a few hundred Fannies-followers into country music fans. Wow. The highlight of her set is Joe Flood's majestic "Pile of Woe", with its uplifting lyric that tugs at my heart every time I hear it. ("And now I'm looking out for rain with every grain of hope I sow/Ploughing this pile of woe". Majestic). Also especially wonderful is the cover of Amy Rigby's "Don't Break the Heart" --- plaintive, pleading and, above all, pleasing.

Teenage Fanclub are nothing if not democratic. For the bulk of the set, we get treated to a Norman song, a Gerry song, a Raymond song, then the three of them again in order. Bless. It's a joy to behold --- Norman Blake barely able to stop smiling, Raymond out to the left, lanky and laconic, Gerry trying to feign oblivion of the one fan who repeatedly screams "Love your haircut, Gerard!", Francis contributing further delightful harmonies from out back; none of them capable, it seems, of hitting a wrong note. I've always been a Love man, and the bassist's songs --- including a ravishing "Radio", a driving "Speed of Light" and a superlative "Sparky's Dream" --- shine tonight. Yet even (and I must confess a prior prejudice here) Raymond's songs come out glistening. "Neil Jung", particularly, catches the, erm, ear. However, Norman's the one who gets to stand centre stage, and he gets to dazzle with the likes of "Sparky's" b-side "Some People Try (To Fuck With You)" (replete with swanny whistle solo!), an incendiary run-through of "Everything Flows", a song now over a decade old (now think on that and I defy anyone to contend that time does not fly), and the second encore, a fragile acoustic thing called "Broken". And they're off, leaving a fuzzy warm feeling inside. [Interesting aside --- the Fannies' guitar tech bloke is the "guitar George (he knows all the chords)" from Dire Straits "Sultans of Swing". Mad!]

On the walk across town to the PATH train, I happen upon a couple of lads playing chess along Thompson Street with an older guy, Sam, whose "job" is, apparently, chess. I end up playing 3 games against Chris, a kid from Bayonne, NJ (God knows why he's up at this hour in the middle of Greenwich Village). Despite (surprisingly, to both of us) destroying him in the second game, I lose 2-1, and head on home, not before an apologetic Alison calls me to verify that she fucked up and I hate her. Of course I don't, though, and after an evening with the Fanclub, I'm incapable of hating anything. Uplifting, I reckon. Yeah, uplifting. (andrew.2001)