Teenage Fanclub return with new album in October

On October 9, Teenage Fanclub will release their new album Do Not Dare To Dream on Merge Records (pre-order). The band’s 13th studio album follows 2023's Nothing Lasts Forever. Lead single “Day In The Sun” is accompanied by a music video filmed on location at Black Bay Studio on Great Bernera by Donald Milne. The track is available now on all digital platforms.

For nearly four decades, Norman Blake and Raymond McGinley have led Teenage Fanclub. Although it took the album title from Blake’s wryly named “I Do Not Dare To Dream,” Blake says, “Those ‘dare to dream’ sentiments are kind of ridiculous”...“I don’t think the world works that way.” 

Reflecting on the album’s outlook, McGinley notes, “We can still be cheerful and optimistic in the face of things not being great.”

Recorded at Black Bay Studio on the remote Scottish island of Great Bernera - the band's most remote recording location yet - helped the band focus on the work but also put them in a place of awe, surrounded as they were by the crashing sea and ancient ruins. Teenage Fanclub likes to take advantage of what a studio has available to use, and at Black Bay the band found a Domus church organ (prominently heard on many songs, including “Over And Over”) and a lot of different synthesizers.

Joined by longtime members Euros Childs, Francis Macdonald, and David McGowan, this quintet has played together long enough now that neither of Teenage Fanclub’s principal songwriters and guitarists feel the need to fuss over their songs or work up arrangements before they enter the studio. They’d rather wait for the rest of the group’s input. 

Blake says, “I think what happens is you just move from one thing into the next and before you know it, 30 years have passed. McGinley adds: “Yeah, it’s been a while since we started doing this thing we do, but to us it feels like no time at all. In the place where we made the record people would have been singing thousands of years ago. Life is short, but music is eternal.”

Stream: “Day in the Sun” on All Digital Platforms
Watch: “Day in the Sun” video on YouTube

Track list:

1. There Was You
2. Tomorrow People
3. Over And Over
4. Be With You Tonight
5. The Same Air
6. I Do Not Dare To Dream
7. Take Time
8. Day In The Sun
9. Somewhere To Land
10. Young And Wise