Whether Thirteen amounts to a subconscious or deliberate rejection of the possibility of major success remains one for the armchair psychologists: certainly, the feeling at the time was that all Teenage Fanclub needed to do to make America roll over like a tickled puppy was bash out another spangly glam album along the lines of Bandwagonesque. Instead, to the undoubted mortification of their record company, accountants and heirs, they came up with the dark and baleful Thirteen, an album which was much criticised for not being what it patently isn't--ie Bandwagonesque II--and which sold like iced lollies on a cold day, but which, on its own merits, might even be Teenage Fanclub's best album. The beginnings do not calculate to please: a rumble of distorted guitars that sounds like someone trying to start a misfiring truck, but from which emerges the outrageously pretty, flute-laden ballad "Hang On". From there, Thirteen is one great song after another. Though the melodies are made to fight through a slough of angry guitar noise, they're as good as any Teenage Fanclub have written--which, naturally, means they're as good as any. "Radio" is an exuberant jangle that would have sounded well at home on Bandwagonesque. "The Cabbage" is a superior Byrds pastiche that includes the eloquently embittered phrase "Are we together?/I guess we're not/Asked you for nothing/That's what I got"--a rare example of a genuinely venomous Teenage Fanclub love song. In the wholly admirable Teenage Fanclub canon, Thirteen is the misfit, the gatecrasher, but nonetheless worth owning for that. --Andrew Mueller
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