Aging gracefully as a pop band is difficult. This is music for teenagers, which, at best, brings a technicolor flush to the infatuations, the growing pains, and the outrages of youth. Teenage Fanclub once scaled those adolescent heights by excelling at the basics: Their 1995 single “Sparky’s Dream” still boasts the dreamiest power pop melody ever put to tape, while 1991’s “Alcoholiday” illustrates how it feels to fall into bed without falling in love. It’s been decades since these Scotts have leaned into their killer instincts. Even when “Home,” a lovely amble from 2021, breaks into a solo, Raymond McGinley’s guitar peaks at a dull roar.
Little has changed on Do Not Dare to Dream, which shuffles its feet as McGinley and Norman Blake turn to vague observations about mirrors, tomorrows, and rainbows. A new Teenage Fanclub record has never felt so unceremonious—and this is a band who once repeated the lines “All my life I felt so uptight/Now it’s alright” for three minutes straight. Now, on their third album since the departure of co-founder Gerard Love, the bassist and vocalist who acted as 5-Hour Energy for the band, an unfortunate question arises: What’s left of Teenage Fanclub without any guitar attacks, peppy hooks, or romantic hangups?
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Despite its pleasantries, Do Not Dare to Dream moves at a glacial pace, content to not rustle any feathers. There’s relief to be found in McGinley’s love songs, an internal response to Blake’s stultifying melancholy. He starts with the Valentine’s Day card simplicity of “There Was You,” which is bolstered by an abundance of harmonies and an overdetermined major 7th to cue the final chorus, and he peaks on the waltz of “Be With You Tonight,” where a harmonized guitar solo gets unleashed. The sleepy “Over and Over,” one of Blake’s contributions, uses Crosby, Stills and Nash harmonies to underline the restlessness of middle age. The solution? “All of us, we’re going to fall in love, over and over.”
