www.musicweek.com THE BIG INTERVIEW FRAN HEALY
‘SEE, THAT’S THE PROBLEM WITH HAVING HUGE HITS…’
… and Travis had more than most, including smash 1999 No.1 album The Man Who, which has sold more than 2.5 million units in the UK to date. Since then, they’ve watched other bands recycle their gentle, sugar-spun indie style and conquer the world. Now they’re back after a five year hiatus - and ready to share a few vital lessons about the record business
12.07.13 Music Week 15
TALENT BY TIM INGHAM
I
t’s hard to argue against the version of history in which Travis swung open the window of opportunity for Coldplay’s meteoric rise. Chris Martin’s mob merrily conga’d into the international acoustic indie pop high life, as their Scottish forebears struggled to keep
up.Martin, to his credit - if perhaps to his financially-related insensitivity - admitted in 2005 that he was “just a poor man’s Fran Healy”. A little historical revisionism, then: had Travis
followed up their breezy, hit-packed third album The Invisible Band (2001) with a sunnier, more predictable effort, Martin may still be struggling to dislodge them from the upper reaches of the US Billboard chart. Riding high off a string of hook-laden airplay smashes such as Why Does It Always Rain On Me?, Turn, Flowers In The Window and Sing, the stage
was set for global stardom. Instead, Travis’s gloomy yet melodic fourth LP, 12 Memories (2003), channeled frontman Healy’s battle with clinical depression. It hit platinum UK sales, but ultimately triggered a precipitous slide down indie’s A-list. Five years and an additional LP (2007’s The Boy
With No Name) later, Travis’s sixth studio album, Ode To J Smith, arrived in September 2008. By then, the Driftwood-peddling Scottish group
had long missed their chance to leap into the transatlantic soft-rock money tranche. Even worse, they had become shorthand for an unfashionable brand of chipper, benign indie music - almost anti- punk. If Coldplay were, as Alan McGee unfairly put it, ‘bed-wetters’, then Travis were blanket-suckling in the same cot. Hurtfully, they had become uncool. Which makes it all the more tragic that Ode To
J Smith was such an excellent, ‘lost classic’ LP. With no obvious singles, it was a cocktail of distorted, beguling anthems; a liberating mix of All I Wanna Do Is Rock wailing and experimental, bizarro
ABOVE Where You Stand: Travis’s new album is released on August 19. They tour the UK in October
moments - complete with a blast of Gregorian chant and a full-blown prog wig-out. It commercially floundered like no Travis album before, despite being passionately adored by fans and receiving rave reviews (Metro gave it a 5* write-up, Q Magazine named it one of its albums of the year). For Travis themselves, Ode To J Smith
represented a new-found freedom that stretched beyond a mere sonic rebirth. It was the first ever record issued on Red Telephone Box, the band’s own pioneering self-release label. It was also the last we heard from them - until now. A full five years (and one Healy solo effort) on,
the group’s new LP Where You Stand is also released on Red Telephone Box, this time in tandem with Kobalt Label Services. Travis and their respected long-term manager,
Wildlife’s Ian McAndrew, have drawn up a ‘dream team’ of outside help for its campaign, including ex- Oasis marketeer Emma Greengrass and Barbara Charone’s PR outfit, MBC.
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