Teenage Fanclub + Veronica Falls @ Shepherds Bush Empire - 2010-06-08

It's been a long time since I last saw Teenage Fanclub. My Songkick gigography says 1992 and I have no reason to think that I've seen them since then (although my Songkick gigography is very far from complete). I never stopped loving them, just stopped going to see them... I kept buying the albums, but none (current one included) quite grabbed me like those early ones did, although that probably says more about me then about them (and probably worth pointing out that Grand Prix is probably my favourite and that was in 1995!).

So I arrived (ridiculously early) at the Shepherds Bush Empire with a certain amount of trepidation. We were all a lot more grown up now.

Veronica Falls battled through the murky muddle of sound and made the noise of young kids with guitars - which is a noise I love and which... for a while... made me feel young again. They had fun, every song ended with a scrappy chop at the guitar strings or lazy bang around the drum kit as if they didn't really care about the end because the rest of it had been so great. It was refreshing the complete lack of reverence they had for their own music.

It took The Fannies a while to completely win me over, my natural inclination was to believe that we were too grown up, the kids were getting in the way - and that led to a little reluctance on my part to relax into it. But I was eventually hooked and by the time of the main set run in of The Concept, Ain't That Enough and Sparky's Dream I was 20 years younger... and so were they (actually in that run in was squeezed one off the new album but I'll pretend it wasn't. Not because it wasn't great (it was) but because it don't think I wanted it to be there!). They came back and encored and closed off with Everything Flows and that was it... the only end... maybe it's always how they end... it should be.

And just to complete the picture here's me (I'm in there somewhere) and The Fannies n 1990