Travis
The Boy With No Name

A grand comeback for Travis, the Scottish band that characterized an important phase in late '90s British pop, thanks mainly to 'The Man Who' and 'The Invisible Band,' two albums considered (especially the first) as clear examples of songwriting that inherited the melodic tradition ranging from the Beatles to the gloomy Scottish bands of the '80s (Deacon Blue, Aztec Camera, etc.) up to Radiohead and Coldplay (who took more than a hint from their bestseller).

A group that has never liked being in the spotlight and has always chosen a low profile from an image standpoint, Travis nonetheless created truly remarkable songs that connected a certain generational fringe not easily definable but that hasn't abandoned the band over these years of lesser media exposure following the failure of '12 Memories,' a dark and not very immediate album made amidst various personal problems of the musicians.

After almost 4 years of silence, their new album is released these days, titled 'The Boy With No Name' (dedicated to the singer and songwriter's son, the newly minted father Fran Healy) that marks a "return to roots" for the band towards the sounds of 'The Man Who,' the album for which they are still remembered and which has been an inevitable benchmark for all subsequent works: already the single Closer (and its positive video complete with a cameo by Ben Stiller) shows a detour from the sadness of '12 Memories,' and the other tracks previewed on their MySpace sound melancholic but sunny, arranged and produced divinely (after all, with Nigel Godrich's production and Brian Eno's oversight, which is very clear in tracks like The Big Chair, quality is guaranteed) and above all with inspired songwriting, thanks especially to Healy's talent, here at his best vocal performance.

The album opens with 3 Times And You Lose, a wonderful opening track with a very '70s wall of sound (an acoustic ballad in the style of The Band with female choruses à la Leonard Cohen) which I consider to be the most ambitious track ever made by Travis, a song that is epic and understated at the same time and conveys a sense of magic, truly exceptional.
It proceeds with Selfish Jean, a very catchy and infectious track that rests on a classic and very familiar Motown beat that we've heard a thousand times (You Can't Hurry Love, A Town Called Malice, Walkin' On Sunshine) but that, for a mystery that I still can't solve, never tires and you could listen to it ten times in a row without becoming bored...melodically I feel there's a certain influence of the more poppy Belle & Sebastian, the classic "cheerful pop mood even though it's been raining all week", which is naturally a delight to my ears.
The already mentioned Closer, is a ballad with high radio potential and is the classic "grower" (a bit like Sing was), those tracks that at first listen don't say much but then, by the fourth or fifth time you hear them on airplay, they stick and you can't get them out of your head until another one comes along... I must say that, however beautiful the song is, it doesn't represent the album which, despite expectations, isn't insincere at all but sounds genuine and even inadvertently touching at certain moments.

The Big Chair is for example a very unusual track developed over an enveloping bass line and proceeds with a lot of slightly minimal arrangements that make it interesting to listen to on headphones... among those I've listened to, it's the track where Eno's touch is most felt while the ending is pure Godrich (with a deafening whistle, an idea he's used several times in the past, almost to "dirty" a clean sound with a completely out-of-context noise from the song). In any case, the album's highest point is in the central part, with the sequence Battleships, Eyes Wide Open, and My Eyes (possible single), three songs truly perfect in their immediacy and characterized by enveloping melodic textures, with Healy inspired like never before... Travis excels when aiming to create melancholic atmospheres while infusing a sense of serenity at the same time, positive vibrations that mix with that slightly nostalgic aftertaste suggested by references to music of the past (Beatles, Kinks, Bob Dylan, Smiths) and by harmonics with a high emotional rate but never artificial or banal.

Also noteworthy is the cameo by KT Tunstall (little more than a quick appearance really) in Under The Moonlight and the concluding New Amsterdam, a romantic and suggestive homage to both New York City (now Healy's permanent residence) and the singer's personal heroes (Jean-Michel Basquiat, Francois Truffaut/ Robert Zimmerman and De Niro/ Paris, Texas/ End of the world... and they meet/ on Blaker Street/ or the Park that is Central).

In short, 'The Boy With No Name' reveals itself as an elegant, refined, intelligent and poetic album, showing a band that has finally returned in great form after a moment of difficulty and has undoubtedly created the most mature work of their entire career, beyond the comparisons that will predictably be drawn with The Man Who.

But we are still on truly excellent levels.

On the other hand, how better to conclude than to leave the final word to good old Fran: "I took note of what the famous designer Paul Smith once told me, a person I very much admire: there's no need to make revolutions in art, just small progressive shifts. If you stray too far from your path, you risk going off on a tangent and shooting off, instead you have to maintain a recognizable line, consistent with what you've done before.... from here to sixty years, I hope that some of our songs are still around and know how to move people. I want them to remember our music, not our faces. ‘Why does it always rain on me?’ has already become a classic, and so has 'Sing'.... It happens by chance, you don't realize until you play them live and record the audience's reaction: among the new ones, it's been 'My eyes', so far, that has been the most successful in concert. You can make an entire album of beautiful and original songs like those of The Good, The Bad And The Queen and probably in ten years no one will remember it. At least that's my impression... Certain records are like newspapers that last for a day, others are like novels that last forever."