Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *
The arcade, for many, was a place that was called home when home itself felt like alien territory. To be surrounded by likeminded people of your own age, to be overwhelmed by the bright lights, the echoing sound of coexistence and the constant range of voices in their angst as they took on ghosts, space invaders with repeated taps of an enticing button and the joystick which was handled by a thousand kids in their retreat into a world of machines and wires, the system that spawned a generation of teenagers to understand that what they needed was community, not derision and ridicule.
The anticipation of the long awaited can be felt as keenly in art as it can in social revolution, if you place too much faith in it changing and altering the realms of your reality, you could be left floundering, the Pac-Man ghosts turning their natural colour just as you were about to devour them, that final alien spaceship which crushes the dream of holding the big score on screen; this is where the emergence of the Endless Arcade can be found to be the harbour in which anticipation rises up to the challenge, or which can lead to the disappointment of Time somehow breaking under the strain.
For Teenage Fanclub, hope is always offered that the anticipation will be worth the wait, and five years down the line since the release of Here, the Scottish group have refocused their energies and delivered a sound that encapsulates the motif that the world, though dumbstruck and damaged by recent events, still has the capacity to be the beacon of light in the shrouded grey imposed by others, those who seek adherence to conformity.
Endless Arcade fits without scraping the sides the idea that melancholy and the sense of being inspired, even enriched, can play a huge part in bringing people out of their entrenched outlook, the hoist of the flag to which we salute, not a symbol, but the importance of being around people who improve your lives just by standing with you, not asking for anything other than company and friendship, and who will battle insecurity and loss with you as if they can be defeated by the right move at the most significant time.
Through tracks such as Warm Embrace, Everything Is Falling Apart, I’m More Inclined, Back In The Day and Living With You, Teenage Fanclub have returned to stimulate the fans, and whilst we still remain in darkness, the knowledge that we are not alone as the music from the Endless Arcade fills our minds, and gives us the impetuous to shoot for eternal glory.
An impressive response to being out of the studio for several years, Teenage Fanclub make their voices heard once more in the Endless Arcade.
Teenage Fanclub release Endless Arcade on 30th April via PeMa.
Ian D. Hall