IT'S been six long years since Belshill-bred indie rock stars Teenage Fanclub released their last album, but the wait for new music from core trio Norman Blake (guitar/vocals), Raymond McGinley (guitar/vocals), Gerry Love (bass/vocals) plus regular sidemen Francis McDonald (drums) and Dave McGowan (keys) is almost over.
Released next Friday on their own PeMa label, Here, will be the Fanclub's 10th LP since they formed back in 1989.
A slow-cooked affair recorded over three years at two different sessions, first at Vega in rural Provence and then at lead guitar slinger McGinley's home studio in Glasgow, it's an album that even the band weren't sure that they would ever get around to in the period following their last record, Shadows (2010).
"We honestly didn't know if we'd make another," admits Fannies frontman Norman Blake, who has been based in Canada for the past few years.
"Part of it is that I've been over there, so just getting together has been a little harder – but there's been a little bit of inertia too."
Indeed, at this point in their 27-year career, the youthful enthusiasm of the 1990s – which saw Teenage Fanclub releasing six albums in the space of five years, including the classic LPs Bandwagonesque (1991), Grand Prix (1995) and Songs From Northern Britain (1997), the latter a pair top 10 albums at the height of the Britpop craze the band were never part of – has been justifiably replaced by middle-aged contentment.
Blake and co could easily ditch making records altogether in favour of simply touring a couple of times a year and playing fan favourites.
However, that will never happen – as the guitarist explains.
"I think we would always want to make records," he tells me.
"The band was kind of formed to do that. We didn't want to demo, we just wanted to make a record – and that's what we did. We had a few hundred quid so we made an album (1990's wonderfully noisy A Catholic Education) and had out friend Stephen from The Pastels send it out to a few people he knew.
"It just so happened that a couple of them wanted to release it."
Luckily for us, Stephen Pastel is a well connected fella: Gerard Cosloy, the founder of Homestead Records (Dinosaur Jr, Big Black, Naked Raygun) who was about to start Matador Records – now one of America's most respected independent labels – and Dave Barker at Paperhouse Records (The Pastels, Eugenius, Half Japanese) were the ones who gave the Fanclub their first record deals.
"We really only feel comfortable touring if we've got an album out as well," Blake continues.
"If, next time we get together, we record and we don't think it's up to scratch or we can't get the songs together, then that would be the end of it.
"I don't think we want to go onto the nostalgia circuit, I don't think we would enjoy that too much."
Thankfully, Here has been worth the wait: it's sure to delight fans of the band's immediately recognisable combination of vocal harmonies, chiming guitars and sweet melodies.
Featuring an even split of songwriting between Blake, Love and McGinley, this LP is a particularly mellow, contented sounding affair which seems to reflect Teenage Fanclub's current state of wellbeing.
A pair of advance 'teaser' tracks, Norman Blake's peppy ode to devotion I'm In Love and the Gerry Love-penned Thin Air's breezy, drum roll peppered nostalgia trip, can be sampled right now at the band's official website Teenagefanclub.com, where you can also feast your eyes upon a promo video for the former track, which captures the band in action at Orange Juice man Edwyn Collins' studio.
The record also has a gently psychedelic element to it, perhaps best represented by the mesmerisingly motorik extended outro to McGinley's dreamy I Was Beautiful When I Was Alone and the groovy retro guitar pop swell of The First Sight, a gently euphoric Gerry Love number which also benefits from cunningly deployed trumpets.
"We actually did most of the basic tracks in Provence in Spring 2013 and then went off and had a think about what we'd done," reveals Blake of Here's extended gestation.
"Then I flew over to Glasgow a few months later and we did most of the vocals at Raymond's.
"Over the next few months we were really finessing things, taking our time, thinking about how and where we wanted to mix it. Raymond found a great studio in Hamburg called Clouds Hill Recordings and that part came together pretty quickly last August, actually."
Indeed, Here might have been here at some point towards the end of 2015 were it not for scheduling difficulties with the Fanclub's US label, Merge.
"There was a chance to maybe release it a little earlier, but in the end it was all going to be a bit too rushed. So we've just been waiting for our slot since then."
All good things come to those who wait – including the first proper Teenage Fanclub tour in six years, which the band were just starting to prepare for when we spoke.
"I'm actually going out to pick up my amp from our storeroom this afternoon so I can have a fiddle around with it and make sure it's sounding OK," Blake tells me.
"I'm staying at my mother's place – so she's probably not going to be too happy about that."
While this statement conjures an amusing mental picture of poor old Mrs Blake banging a broom off her living room ceiling at the sudden onslaught of Vox-amplified guitar noise emanating from her now middle-aged son's old bedroom above, we shouldn't worry.
"The good news for her is that I've just bought an attenuator," he reveals.
"That means I can get the tone of the amp but at a much quieter volume, so hopefully it won't be too bad."
They don't call Norman Blake 'the nicest man in indie rock' for nothing, you know.
:: Here is released on Friday September 9. Teenage Fanclub play The Academy in Dublin on December 2, tickets on sale now via Ticketmaster.ie.
