Our Fran in the North

Have we missed something? Have Travis returned to their loved ones tonight after winning the UEFA Cup, becoming the first rock band in space, single-handedly reigning victorious in World War Three and discovering cures for the entire A to Z of ghastly diseases?

Um, no, merely after a support slot with Oasis, a short UK tour of their own, a moderately well-received first album and a few minor hit singles, actually. And yet, judging by the boundlessly charged buzz of homecoming gig affection which greets them, you'd think it was much more.

With best chums screaming their approval down the front, elderly relatives watching proudly from the wings and the rest of the crowd heavily intoxicated by the bonhomie of the occasion, Fran Healy and co. need pull no great surprises for the rest of the evening, frankly, and the adulation would hardly waver one jot. Which, come to think of it, might prove a bit handy.

Let's face it, despite the heartening sparks of superior tunesmithery which sometimes lurk in their own music, there's still little about their ceaselessly chunky rock to beseech the impartial to really shout their name from the rooftops. Few signs that the Verve / Radiohead-sized emotional range that, it's been suggested, will eventually be theirs has thus far got beyond a lyrical merger of the kind of morbidity and reverie which seems significant enough in the booze-powered wee hours, but often meagre and trivial in the cold light of the following day.

OK, so edifying or inherently soul-touching they're not--whereas brilliantly loud and powerfully entertaining they can be. The bleary-eyed, therapy-through-woe of "The Line Is Fine," for instance, is the cue for the crowd to pogo so fervently it's as if a Californian earthquake has gone off course, and proof positive that sometimes the alco-emotions of the night are worth umpteen moments of daytime clarity. All that's left to cope with at this juncture is the way they are the visual personification of vapid safe-rock. It's the grinning, interminably cheerful Fran flanked by a pair of wobbly-faced riffsters who subscribe fully to the theory that playing a string instrument is a very painful thing to do indeed.

But even this proves no great obstacle when the rollicking, incontrovertibly ace "All I Wanna Do Is Rock" roars slo-mo-mesmerically into being. But somewhat more of one when Travis's grisly other side takes command. Yup, we're talking "the fast ones"; the ones where if it isn't too doltish glam laid on too heavily, it's cloying traces of music hall, and the daft terrace stomp of "U16 Girls" and the repugnant "Tied to the '90s."

That Travis then go on to play the disarmingly languid "Falling Down" and "Funny Thing"--and a similarly earthy newie called "As You Are"--thereby re-establishing the form they showed earlier, demonstrates their need to get a tighter, less haphazard grip on their muse. Which, in turn, might grant us a better handle on them, too.

Still, that's very much the brow-furrowing, career trajectory-shaped stuff of the morning after and not of now, an occasion most akin to several dozen 21st birthday parties happening at once.

They encore with the tune everyone's been baying for since the start. That's "Happy," and ultimately, you'd have to battle hard against your charitable side to leave tonight with a different sentiment in tow.

Melody Maker
January 17, 1998
by Andy Crysell
(who he? btw, Kate, this is condescending)

He-ey!

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