Oasis may be the biggest band in Britain right now, but Teenage Fanclub have squatters' rights on a large chunk of Britpop's territory. Only recently, the Scottish fourpiece were in London's Air Studios, putting the finishing touches to their fifth album, Songs From Northern Britain, when in swaggers Liam Gallagher and announces, "You're a fucking great band, man! Top songs, top tunes, top band. The best f***ing band in the world!" Eloquently put, young William, and there's many who would agree with your succinct observation. Ever since Bandwagonesque hit the shop shelves sometime around the early part of the decade, Teenage Fanclub have enjoyed the kind of cult status usually reserved for the Gram Parsonses and Alex Chiltons of the world, and while indie bands came and went like fashion, the Teenies held firmly to their old-fashioned, jangly guitar vision, earning their fans' unswerving loyalty where others only reaped disillusionment and disdain. Bandwagonesque contained such pop gems as The Concept, a tune about a girl who wears denim and buys Status Quo records, and What You Do To Me, a direct-hit whiff of pheromone pop. It also contained one of the greatest pop songs ever written, a song so shiny and precious that some people remained blind to its dazzling genius. The song is called Starsign, and why it didn't appear in Mojo magazine's current list of 100 best pop songs is a mystery of cosmic proportions. I'm on the phone to Norman Blake, one of the songwriting triumvirate which makes Teenage Fanclub sound vibrant and fresh despite the initial impression that they may simply be rehashing some used Byrds riffs. We're discussing the band's fifth album, the provocatively-titled Songs From Northern Britain, which is out on Monday. Is the title some Scottish Nationalist slogan, I ask (knowing full well that it's not). "It's not," confirms Norman. "We're internationalists, you know. We're not nationalists in that sense, we're not the flag-waving SNP voters or whatever. I dunno, I guess we just kinda thought it was funny. We did have a conversation at one point - apparently after the 1745 revolt or whatever, when Scotland was crushed, there were new maps made up, and where it used to say Scotland it now said Northern Britain. That's true."

So is the title a wry attempt to distance yourselves from Britpop? "It's really kind of a reaction to Britpop in a way, you know, the idea of something being Britpop. I mean, Oasis are Manchester, and Blur are from London, Colchester or whatever, and Pulp have been around for years, and to try to pull this disparate bunch of people together and call them a scene is kind of ridiculous, you know. And I remember a few years back, Morrissey did a gig, and he was waving a Union Jack around, and they gave him hell for it, called him a fascist."

Whereas nowadays, Noel Gallagher can go onstage with a Union Jack guitar and he becomes an ambassador for Britpop. "Yeah, that's right, so it's kind of ironic that the press are now into flag-waving."

If Teenage Fanclub can be accused of waving a flag, then it would be the banner of American psychedelic pop once flown by The Byrds, The Beach Boys and Big Star. They've been honing it down to a fine art, getting it a bit awry on 1993's Thirteen, but hitting it full throttle on 1995's Grand Prix. The new album doesn't stray from the Fannies' chosen path, and songs such as Planets, Jack Uzi and Your Love Is The Place Where I Come From follow a tried and trusted musical route. With pop music's increasing demand for innovation and experimentation, such consistency may be seen as stagnation, but with Teenage Fanclub it seems the less they change, the better we like 'em. "It's obviously nice to be in that position where people still like us," concedes Norman. "I mean, we've always done our own thing, we've never really compromised too much, we've never compromised our musical integrity, or whatever. We've always done what we wanted to do, and never thought, maybe we should do this type of song and it will be a hit. We've always just thought, well, if we get a hit, it'll just come our way, maybe from people hearing us on the radio."

What if you suddenly had a big hit record after all these years, like Pulp did with Common People, how would you deal with that? "Impossible to guess," muses Norman. "I suppose we've already had it with our most recent single (Ain't That Enough). That's the highest chart entry we've ever had, it went in at Number 17, so we were really pleased with that. That's like a total victory for us, and Creation were really happy because they haven't had that many records in the Top 20 apart from obviously Oasis and Primal Scream, and I think the Boo Radleys had a big Top 20 song.

"I reckon we're sort of crawling our way up the charts, and who knows if we'll get any higher, but I mean, we'll just keep on doing what we do. And I think people know what to expect when they buy our albums, if they have bought previous albums. They know it's not gonna be a gangsta rap record, or they know it's not gonna be goth, or some new direction or whatever. I think that's what people like about us, they like the fact that they can buy our albums and know what they're getting."

What you get with a Teenage Fanclub album are a dozen songs, dripping with heavenly pop guitar, and divided out between the band's three songwriters, Norman, Gerard Love and Raymond McGinley. In true Beatles style, each songwriter takes lead vocals on his own composition, but, as shown on the new album, the disparate talents don't take away from the record's overall cohesion. "I think having three songwriters in the band helps us to keep our quality control up. When you play with someone for eight years, it starts to become intuitive, you sort of know what each other are doing. I suppose it's like anything, it's a craft, and the more you do it, hopefully the better you get at it. I'm sure the way you write now is better than the way you wrote 10, 15 years ago."

Hmmm, must check my first ever Teenage Fanclub review and see if there has been any improvement since then. Does the ageing process dull your pop sensibilities at all, or can you do like Neil Young and stay razor sharp if a little ragged?

"Well, we still enjoy doing it," asserts Norman, "Although we're probably not on the cutting edge. I think if we stopped enjoying it, we wouldn't do it anymore, I really believe that. We're all thirtysomething now, and three of us are married, some of us with kids."

Which kind of puts you outside the Hanson league, then. "We could be Hanson's dads! Fucking hell!" laughs Norman. "I think it would look ridiculous if we tried to act younger. I think it would just look stupid, you know. I mean, you can make music at any age, and we're just trying to make music that reflects us."

Songs From Northern Britain, by Teenage Fan Club, is out next Monday on Creation.