Teenage Fanclub: Bowery Ballroom, New York, NY (10/15/2016)

Scotland's Teenage Fanclub have just released their tenth studio album, Here. Their tour stopped at New York's Bowery Ballroom and I eagerly attended the show. It was my sixth time seeing TFC and second time seeing them at Bowery Ballroom. I'd first seen the band in 1993 at CBGB's. Their sound has changed considerably since then - with each album the band seems to ditch the Big Star/Jesus And Mary Chain influence more and more and they've become closer to being Crosby, Stills & Nashesque.

Norman Blake, Gerard Love & Raymond McGinley still deliver the goods. The band were in good form and their twenty-song set contained plenty of old favorites (including "Star Sign", "The Concept", "Radio" and "About You"). The band started the set off appropriately enough with "Start Again" and closed with their epic debut single "Everything Flows". In between the band played newish and genuinely new material (including the fine new single "I'm In Love").

The subtlety of the band's material is a something of a strength unto-itself, and the understatedness of the songs reveal themselves over-time. Which, if you're unfamiliar with, may not reveal themselves immediately, especially in a live setting. Thankfully for me, I knew all of these songs very well and wasn't clinging to a hope that the band was going to break out into a loud medley of material from their Bandwagonesque album. I was however disappointed that they didn't play "What You Do To Me", "Hang On" and even "Sparky's Dream", but I'll get over this some day.