Music review: Teenage Fanclub, Kelvingrove Bandstand, Glasgow

I ADORE Teenage Fanclub. It’s “important” that you know this, as I have mixed feelings about their first Scottish gig since founding member Gerry Love quit last year.

Raymond McGinley, Norman Blake, Francis MacDonald and Dave McGowan are moving on from the loss of founding member Gerry Love. Picture: Greg Chow/Shutterstock

Teenage Fanclub, Kelvingrove Bandstand, Glasgow ***

They always thrived on having three great songwriters: Love, Norman Blake and Raymond McGinley. Excluding Love’s songs from their shows, though understandable at this stage, leaves a significant hole in the set-list. But what else can they do? Blake singing the classic likes of Sparky’s Dream, Star Sign and Ain’t That Enough would draw even more attention to Love’s absence.

Their repertoire still boasts such beauteous clashes of melody and squall as The Concept, God Knows It’s True and Everything Flows (the latter, as always, the perfect, epic set-closer). They’re hardly starved of material. But still…

Love’s absent third harmony is currently shared between drummer Francis MacDonald, bassist Dave McGowan (also of Belle & Sebastian) and new recruit Euros Childs from Gorky’s Zygotic Mynci, who also plays keyboards.

The first half hour of this outdoor show was tepid, but the middling song choices and uneven sound mix eventually gave way in time for Blake’s exquisitely sad masterpiece Alcoholiday, the opening chords of which instigated a sudden, heart-warming crowd surge to the front of the stage.

The Loveless Teenage Fanclub aren’t an oldies act, they’re recording new material. They’re moving on while celebrating two-thirds of their legacy. At the moment, however, the loss of Blake and McGinley’s equal partner is difficult to ignore. It’ll take time to adjust.

PAUL WHITELAW