The King by Teenage Fanclub

The King, Teenage Fanclub's second album, was deleted on the very day Creation released it in 1991, which tells you plenty about this ramshackle curio. The Glasgow band of Norman Blake, Raymond McGinley, Gerard Love and drummer Brendan O'Hare cut it straight after finishing Bandwagonesque, on studio time already booked and suddenly free because the main event wrapped up early. Blake later remembered one very drunk night: make up some songs, bang out a few covers, stitch it all together.

The band pin the shambling, off-the-cuff feel on producer Don Fleming, whose own music leaned on improvisation, though plenty have written it off as a quick contractual kiss-off to Matador so the band could move to Geffen; in 2020 Matador's Gerard Cosloy said the label turned it down for exactly that reason. The band say they wanted a mid-price run of 1,000 copies. Creation pressed 20,000 and charged full price.

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