Travis - 'Singles' (Independiente Records)
3/5
By: Thomas Hannan
There can't be many among us who don't know every word of this record by now. It's indeed a credit to the catchy songcraft of the Travis boys that even those who aren't even fans will know every little melody inside out, but this does beg one problem: those who do love the band will probably have nigh on everything here. And the bits they don't have, they'd be able to sing word for word to themselves in their heads. Those who would never dream of owning a Travis singles compilation, thanks to omnipresent airplay, will also be in a similar position. So what exactly is the point of 'Singles'?
Well, look at the date. It's got Christmas cash-in written all over it, but alas, something of its kind was bound to rear its head at some point. And regardless of us being unable to fathom anybody who actually needs to own it, doubtless millions will disagree. In its favour, it does read like a history of the past ten years of light-hearted guitar music, and serves as an historical document if nothing else.
To be fair, it has more of a use than that. Travis have, it's fair to admit, written some of the most memorable songs of the past decade, and to have them all in one place is never going to make for a bad release. But what it doesn't make for is an exciting one - couple the fact that Travis at their most interesting are a rock band, prone to odd bonus tracks and anti-war outbursts; an overly friendly, safe singles band, with the inescapable truth that they only release their most predictable little numbers for mass public acceptance.
At times, you get a rather samey affair. The opening trio demonstrate this perfectly - it only dawns on you when they're sequenced consecutively that 'Sing', 'Driftwood' and 'Writing To Reach You' are essentially the same song, slightly different key, slightly different melody, but all these things only slightly. In fact, whilst it was their most successful, the 'Invisible Band' and 'The Man Who' era stuff present is the most easy to ignore, songs so imprinted on the national consciousness that there simply isn't that much reason to listen to them again.
Amidst it all though, there's some patently gorgeous songwriting at times. 'Walking In the Sun' might well be the finest melody of their career, 'Coming Around' an oft overlooked slice of their summery best, 'More Than Us' is delicately, considerably poignant. And whilst it all got a bit pub-rock at the beginning ('Tied To The 90s', the frightful 'Happy'), the period also spawned some greats in the likes of 'All I Wanna Do Is Rock' and 'U16 Girls'. After that however, they seemed to stop writing riffs. And start selling records.
Kudos then for going that little bit controversial with the more hard-hitting, recent efforts like 'Re-Offender' and 'The Beautiful Occupation', proof of life in an old dog yet. But something about this still leaves us just a little cold. Is it the niceness of it, its safeness or its over familiarity? Or perhaps, it's something quite the opposite. Maybe we've been trying to not be fans for so long that hearing ourselves sing along to every word of it, and enjoy doing so much of the time, suddenly makes us feel like we've wasted most of the 90s.
Artists in this article: Travis
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