"This is a concept song called "The Concept""
[Editor's Note: I haven't done one of these posts in a bit, and I thought it was about time.]
1991 was a pretty amazing year for music, a year when new genres and approaches were coming into being that really swept the 1980s away. Nirvana's Nevermind sent hair metal to the dustbin of history a few months after REM's Out of Time brought alternative rock to the top of the charts. Guns N Roses' Use Your Illusion albums and U2's Achtung Baby saw big 80s bands totally reimagining their sounds in fascinating ways. Metallica brought hardcore metal into the mainstream with their eponymous album. It was an amazingly fertile period for hip-hop as well. De La Soul put out their wonderful second album and A Tribe Called Quest released The Low End Theory. Of all that great music that year, Spin magazine chose Teenage Fanclub's Bandwagonesque as their album of the year, and I heartily concurred.
This is one of those albums I keep going back to over and over again and just never get tired of. In my world it's in the exalted territory of Abbey Road or Who's Next, but today it is mostly forgotten. This was a paradox that puzzled me at the time. The songs on this album were so damn catchy and beautiful. Why hadn't the world listened? The only other band that makes me think this way is Big Star, who also made perfect pop-rock music that is mostly listened to by cultists. As a 16 year old first hearing it I was made to realize that what's truly great and what the public likes rarely intersect.
Bandwagonesque starts with "The Concept," melding grungy guitars, strings, strong hooks, and wistful lyrics. As a young lad I didn't understand that the line "She's gonna get some records by the Status Quo" that it was a reference to the band, rather than a concept. At the time I thought that was a killer turn of phrase for someone just consuming middle of the road music. The song, misunderstood lyrics or not, is a kind of manifesto for the album. All of the dominant elements are present here.
In true slacker fashion, of course, track two is a jokey noise exercise called "Satan," meant to mock the then current moral panics around devil worship and hard rock. It is an important reminder that as poppy as this album gets, there's a noisy basement punk anarchy here too. Gears then perversely switch into "December," a gorgeous folk-rock testament of love. As a lovelorn 16 year old ugly duckling this song meant a lot to me. I was aching to have a connection with someone of the opposite sex. The lines "She don't even care/ But I would die for her love" were on my lips while I thought about my crush. (I came dangerously close to being a creep back then.)
As if the pure pop rush couldn't get any more intense comes "What You Do To Me," which would have been a number one hit in a just universe. It's the most Big Star song not written by Big Star. "I Don't Know" follows, with a little taste of Madchester rhythm and more emphasis on the rock over the pop. It's still catchy as hell, though. At this point in the album the hooks pile on top of hooks. When I listened to it as a teenager I would just kind of zone out and feel a little hit of bliss. How many albums can do that?
"Star Sign" breaks things up a little bit with a long, hazy musical introduction. This is a good time to mention that Gumball leader Don Fleming gave this album an impeccable production that managed to be both grungy and clear without being slick. "Star Sign" was the first song I head from this album, via MTV's 120 Minutes. That's what motivated me to actually go out and buy the album, and it ended up being a college rock hit stateside. On a bus trip to a band competition I tried playing it to another kid to get him interested and I got mocked. I very likely may have been the only student in my rural Nebraska high school who was a teenage fan of Teenage Fanclub.
"Star Sign" combines the hooks with a faster tempo, but "Metal Baby" slows it down with a funny song about an indie dude falling in love with a heavy metal chick. The whole album projects the slacker vibe of early 1990s indie rock pretty powerfully, and no song more than this one. I find the tone comforting now that I am a sad, defeated middle-aged man.
"Pet Rock" switches things up to more confident riffing, similar to "I Don't Know." That doesn't stop the feeling of resignation, as it starts with "I'll never pass this way again." There's also that bouncy, Madchester undertone that lets us know that we are definitely in 1991. "Sidewinder" switches back again to romantic yearning territory, another song that made my heart ache for a classmate I was desperately in love with. What's funny is that when I was a senior she showed some signs of interest, but I was too wrapped up in my whole lonely Young Werther schtick that I didn't actually act on it. Nowadays this song makes me laugh at myself pretty hard, but also appreciate the fuzzy guitars.
It's followed by the brilliantly titled "Alcoholiday." The romance of the previous songs drops away in favor of an absolutely brilliant breakup song. "There are things I want to do/ But I don't know if they will be with you" pretty much nails that pre-breakup thought process. Little lovelorn 16 year old me didn't quite understand that yet.
The last two songs on the album break from the formula established from the start with "The Concept." "Guiding Star" is mostly strings and harpsichord, like a long lost pop track from the 1960s, Pet Sounds with a dash of grunge. After that things close out with an instrumental, "Is This Music." I find that move kind of brilliant. I cannot remember how many times I sat in my room, basking in the afterglow of a near perfect album, the wordless final song's bright guitars capping off forty minutes of pure happiness. In the awful hormonal confusion of teendom Bandwagonesque was a life raft on more than one occasion.
Listening to it now in middle age it takes me back to what my mind was like back then more than anything else. The songs have not be redefined in my head by radio play or showing up in commercials. This album will always be that bit of audio medicine that I needed, and for me, even though it's now 28 years old, it's as current as if it came out yesterday.
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