Teenage Fanclub (L to R: Francis Macdonald, Gerard Love, Raymond McGinley, Norman Blake and David McGowan) / Photo by Kyle Gustafson

Editor’s Note: This interview was originally scheduled for Friday, but due to Canadian cell phones and traffic on the I-95 corridor, it wasn’t able to happen until just before doors opened for the band’s show at the 9:30 Club on Saturday. Better late than never, especially when it involves Teenage Fanclub.

All Music Guide’s Andy Kellman once reviewed a Teenage Fanclub record thusly: “Nothing here is going to knock you off your feet, but is that such a bad thing?” That can be said of most of the band’s output post-Creation records, but obviously, no, this is not a bad thing. Far from it actually. Declared “the second best band in the world” by an authority no less than Mr. Noel Gallagher, the Fannies have made a modest career off of solid records mining their Big Star and Byrds influences and incredible three-part harmonies. After a long layoff post-2005’s Man-Made, the band got back into action in 2010 with their latest release, Shadows, a collection of four songs each by songwriters Ray McGinley, Norman Blake and Gerard Love. With this new album comes a U.S. tour which brought the band back to the cozy confines of the 9:30 Club on Saturday night. Singer/guitarist/all-around nice bloke Norman Blake kindly took nine minutes and forty seconds out of his very busy pre-show routine (he had laundry to do, you know) to speak to us about Alan McGee, moving to Canada, why the band didn’t play Matador 21 and also heeds my pleas for a comprehensive b-sides compilation. (Score!)

I can’t help but notice that you aren’t in Las Vegas right now. Why aren’t you playing Matador 21?

They asked us to do it, but we couldn’t. We’d already booked this tour and logistically it was impossible.

You just couldn’t work it out?

Just in terms of the amount of money it was going to take to fly across the country and then come back and start the tour again. It’s a shame, we’d have liked to have been there. It looks like a great event, but it’s one of those things.

So you’re on speaking terms with them now?

Oh yes. Chris Lombardi got in touch with me directly to ask me about it. So absolutely, yeah. It was purely logistical. It’s very expensive to tour.