Travis - Select, February 1999

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Producers: Mike Hedges and Nigel Godrich
Working title: Final Times
Track titles: "Writing to Reach You"; "As You Are"; "Why Does It Always Rain on Me?"; "Flowers in the Window"
Estimated release date: May
Fran Healy: "You know what they say, you get 24 years to record your first album and six months to do your second...
"Actually, some of the songs on here are from years ago. I've been writing since I was 18--I'm 25 now--and I used to think that you could only use songs that were less than a month old or something, but then I realised that people like Paul McCartney and REM release songs that they wrote years before, so I decided it was OK.
"We've spent six weeks on this album so far, compared to two weeks recording Good Feeling. The first few weeks, we were recording at Mike's studios in Normandy, in his chateau. That was pretty amazing. It's just like being in someone's sitting room, except a bit more ornate, obviously.
"We haven't decided on the title yet, but one I toyed with and discarded was Final Times. There's this bloke who stands outside the M&S on Argyll Street in Glasgow selling papers. He's been there about 100 years and he calls out, 'First Times,' and so on, and every time I was in town, he'd be shouting, 'Final Times,' and I used to always think, 'God, that's all a bit heavy.' So I thought of using that, what with it being the end of the millennium and all that, but then I decided it was a bit too ominous.
"We've got Anne Dudley on the album doing another string arrangement. I don't know anything about writing music, B major and pianissimo and all that, so I just said to her, 'I want it to sound like a big black cloud, like you're standing on a beach, and a cloud is following you and getting bigger.' And she went, 'Yes, I'm writing this down, a big black cloud...' and she did it.
"I'd say the album's more laid-back than before, more mature. Like the U16 girls are 19 now, y'know? Hmmmmm...I'm probably not the person to ask, really. It's like asking someone what their baby looks like. I'd say the album looks a little bit like me, a little bit like Dougie, a little bit like Andy, a bit like Neil, a bit like Mike, and a bit like Nigel."
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February 1999

He-ey!

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