FIVE years after Teenage Fanclub's last studio album, Howdy, and two years on from the traditional farewell of a contract-fulfilling compilation, the sun might have gone down on the Glasgow branch of the Byrds and Big Star fanclub. Not so.

Instead Norman Blake, Gerard Love and Raymond McGinley have hooked up with Tortoise producer John McEntire, not on the West Coast that so inspired them but in Chicago. The baroque harmonies are as warm as ever, and McEntire has cut back the gilded lilies of Howdy for perfectionist folk-pop, but Chicago's winds take until track five, Slow Fade, to blow away the cobwebs. From there on, Man-Made is heaven sent.

Kilney quartet Hal drill into the same West Coast Sixties' seam as Teenage Fanclub, especially in their Beach Boys fixation. More ornate than the Glaswegians, their melodic retro pop is sunnier still than fellow arcane Irishmen The Thrills. These blue-eyed love songs of summer will, alas, look as out of place as Pimm's No 1 by winter.

Updated: 12:44 Thursday, May 26, 2005