The first sound you hear is a sustained feedback note that hangs in the air with the grace of a dragonfly before an acoustic riff spirals out of it, soaring upwards. Its blissful and sun-soaked, like a late summer haze blurring out all the details on thehorizon. When voices join the music, they arrive perfectly locked together, honed in on a single melody: Its time to move along/and leave the past behind me... The message is simple. Dont look back, only forward.Foreign Land is the opening track on Teenage Fanclubs eleventh full studio album, Nothing Lasts Forever. That trackand the rest of this beautifully rich and melodic albumis the sound of a seasons end, of the last warm days of the year whilenights begin to draw in and thoughts become reflective and more than a little melancholy. That reflection is everywhere on the record, whether on the autumnal folk rock of Tired of Being Alone that repositions Laurel Canyon to somewhere deep in the heart of the Wye Valley, the William Blakequoting Self-Sedation, or on thesong that preceded Nothing Lasts Forevers completion, last years I Left a Light On, where a spark of hope is kept alight at the end of a relationship.One of the recurring themes on Nothing Lasts Forever is light, as both a metaphor for hope and as an ultimate destination further down the road. Although the bands songwriters Norman Blake and Raymond McGinley found themselves touching on similar themes, it was pure coincidence.
