Teenage Fanclub

At the dawn of the ’90s, as its contemporaries Nirvana and My Bloody Valentine explored darker, more intense terrain, Teenage Fanclub embraced power-pop and the room-filling dazzle of Big Star and The Byrds. Although the Scotsmen would deviate from that sound substantially over the next decade, the band has recently forged a hard-to-classify style that combines the sweetness of ’70s soft-rock, the lovable fuzziness of early-’90s indie, and just a hint of its old abrasion. Teenage Fanclub’s scattered influences coalesce on this year’s Shadows (its first since 2005’s superb Man-Made), led beautifully by “Sometimes I Don’t Need To Believe In Anything.”

Updated 09/23/2010