In terms of the music that I tend to listen to, nearly all roads lead back to the Beatles, the Velvet Underground, Gram Parsons or Big Star, but rarely as directly as the path between that last and Teenage Fanclub's Bandwagonesque - apart from the hints of 90s-ish fuzziness and moments of punkier aggression that sometimes underscore the ring and chime of the guitars that drive the album forward (you could trace all of the above back to the Velvets, if so inclined), it could practically have been a Big Star record.
The album kicks off with its best moment, the soaring, melancholy-sounding "The Concept", which I'm pretty sure I heard for the first time a few months ago in Young Adult, but which, like all of the best songs in this genre, nonetheless sounded instantly familiar. All told, for mine, Bandwagonesque isn't near greatness, - most of it just sounds too familiar - but it's good nonetheless (also, close hewing to the Big Star template notwithstanding, I wouldn't be surprised if it was itself part of the playbook on which Girls drew for their excellent Father, Son, Holy Ghost).
The album kicks off with its best moment, the soaring, melancholy-sounding "The Concept", which I'm pretty sure I heard for the first time a few months ago in Young Adult, but which, like all of the best songs in this genre, nonetheless sounded instantly familiar. All told, for mine, Bandwagonesque isn't near greatness, - most of it just sounds too familiar - but it's good nonetheless (also, close hewing to the Big Star template notwithstanding, I wouldn't be surprised if it was itself part of the playbook on which Girls drew for their excellent Father, Son, Holy Ghost).
