Travis
Everything At Once

The British band Travis, champions and precursors of a certain post-britpop style with melancholic and dreamy atmospheres, which paved the way for a wave of international success bands like Coldplay (now decidedly veering towards high-charting pop) and Keane, for instance, have reached the finish line of their eighth studio album.

Heralded by no less than four singles, the new "Everything At Once" arrives three years after a solid record like "Where You Stand," which reclaimed the band's sonic roots after an unsuccessful attempt leaning towards rock ("Ode To J. Smith" from 2008, not unlistenable but certainly their weakest effort).

If the title track, written by guitarist Dougie Payne and released as the lead single in November 2005, could signal a new propensity to turn up the guitar volume (a verse Beck Hansen wouldn't mind leads into a rocking, sunny radio chorus), the rest of the album reveals a good hybrid between the more classic Travis and a light and discreet "modernization" of the band's sound (as much as a band active since the early nineties and very classic and square in its proposal can modernize), ultimately leading to their best studio effort in a decade.

The Travis most tied to their roots are not missing, manifesting in a batch of tracks that seem to be lifted straight from their masterpiece "The Man Who," starting with the stellar opener "What Will Come," passing through the second single "3 Miles High" (co-written by frontman Fran Healy with Norwegian singer-songwriter Aurora), a dreamy "All Of The Places," and the album's only duet, "Idlewild," which features singer-songwriter Josephine Oniyama.

Elsewhere, we find a very sunny "Magnificent Time," born from an idea by Keane's keyboardist and songwriter Tim Rice-Oxley, which introduces us to "Radio Song," the best track on the album and arguably the best song offered by the band since the days of "The Boy With No Name." Here, the guitars become more sinister (by the band's standards) and weave slightly rougher textures indebted to certain early-nineties American alt-rock, building a delightful wall of sound to accompany Healy's always impeccable vocal performance.

"Paralysed" picks up the pace and nods to folk, "Animals" is a nice rock piece written by Payne and enriched by a nice geometric riff in the refrain, while "Strangers On A Train" is a piano-driven ballad that closes the album and strongly recalls certain offerings by OneRepublic.

"Everything At Once" is another good album from Travis, which continues and consolidates the traditional consistency in the British band's offerings.

Best track: Radio Song