Grand Prix

Born in a soup of melodic grunge at the beginning of the \'90s, and notably championed by Kurt Cobain and Creation stablemates Oasis, Scotland\'s Teenage Fanclub produced this bedrock album in 1995. The three core members - Norman Blake, Gerard Love, and Raymond McGinley - split the songwriting duties equally, backed by the muscular drumming of Paul Quinn. The band siphons their own fabulous vision of timeless guitar pop through layers of gentle distortion, gorgeously gruff harmonies, and straight-up brilliant composition. Highlights include Blake\'s \"I\'ll Make It Clear\" which contains the kind of chord changes that\'ll make the hairs stand up on the back of your neck. Grand indeed.

For all of the brilliance of records like Bandwagonesque and the underrated Thirteen, at times Teenage Fanclub seemed little more than a showcase for the laconic melodic genius of Norman Blake -- fairly or not, the songwriting contributions of bandmates Gerard Love and Raymond McGinley suffered mightily by comparison, mere filler when stacked alongside Blake-penned marvels like "The Concept" and "Norman 3."

Teenage Fanclub - Grand Prix review: Blissful power pop from Scotland's finest melodicists.