“Foreign Land” is the opening track on Teenage Fanclub’s 2023 studio album, Nothing Lasts Forever. That track—and the rest of this beautifully rich and melodic album—is the sound of a season’s end, of the last warm days of the year while nights begin to draw in and thoughts become reflective and more than a little melancholy. 

While the vocals and the finishing touches on Nothing Lasts Forever were recorded at Raymond McGinley’s place in Glasgow, the music was recorded in an intense 10-day period in the bucolic Welsh countryside at Rockfield Studios, near Monmouth, in August 2022. You can hear the effect of that environment on the record—it’s full of soft breeze, wide skies, beauty, and space. 

Though the band that recorded Nothing Lasts Forever—McGinley and Norman Blake on lead vocals and guitar, along with Francis Macdonald on drums, Dave McGowan on bass, and Euros Childs on keyboards—arrived at the residential studio without a fixed plan, their confidence and ease with working together meant the record came together incredibly quickly.