Fame, Fame, Bickle Fame

Imagine there's no Travis. It's easy if you try. No bass and drums beneath you. Above you, only sky.

Francis defies gravity!

Let's face it, there's been nothing on the news recently to suggest that what the world really needs right now is another rock'n'roll band who, hmm, let's see, take the best of the last three decades of rock and make it their very own. At this late stage in the millennium, that's the kind of giant leap for mankind which would have resulted in Neil Armstrong toppling down the steps of the Apollo 9 and Buzz Aldrin bursting into tears. If, in 1997, all you wanna do is rock, then you just aren't making the effort, sugar.

Travis, though, are effortless tonight, and that's not the same thing at all. It's mysterious how this band have swerved the pitfalls their singles have opened up. The beer-soaked, football-scarf-waving anthems. The boogie-woogie piano with all the charm of a bar-room spittoon. The wet wet-dreams about teenage girls. But then, those are traps fallen into by bands who've imperfectly understood rock'n'roll, who've culled their pop personas from a few sticky pages of Hammer Of The Gods and some Oasis tabloid reports. Travis are, despite my initial doubts, better than that. If deep suspicion is the best response to the paraphernalia when a band are date-stamped Next Big Thing (sudden consensus, girls mouthing words to unreleased songs, self-fulfilling prophecy) these gently smiling Scots burn most of it away at the root.

Maybe it's the way they can make the rough-and-tumble Steve Miller barn-storm of "Hazy Shades of Gold" sound like a pop song and not a pub brawl; maybe it's the way they invest dumb-and-dumber songs like "Good Time Girls" with sudden, all-new harmonies that would have Steven Hawking wondering what he possibly missed in his plan of the universe; maybe it's the raw-nerve twitches into Radiohead-like "Funny Thing," where singer Frannie loses his smile and wraps his arm around his guitar. Or maybe it's just a matter of charisma. There's no wasted member in Travis, no clodhopping dullards doing their muso thing in mutinous silence, but Frannie...Frannie is a communicator, pure and simple.

The value of what he actually says fluctuates like it's Black Monday in Wall Street, but when he's looking each and every one of us in the eye, it doesn't matter. If Lennon and Dylan had got it together that night when Bob got The Beatles stoned for the very first time, Frannie might well have been the product. He has that Bobby D hiccup in his voice, that sudden choking spite which sticks his vocal chords together, yet also that Lennonesque primal scream howl, the neat, gum-chewing sarcasm, the dockyard sawdust in his throat.

"All I Want To Do Is Rock" still sounds like warm spilt beer dripping over the bar, but then I thought Oasis were the height of tedium when they were at this stage. Travis are too gentle, too sweet, too excitable to be Oasis--for now, anyway, before their egos bloat like zeppelins and another force for good is lost--but they shouldn't want to be them. They've just about shucked off the horrible guise of lad-rock, and there's a tender core beneath which they alone own.

Imagine there's no Travis. F***, I know I've tried. But somehow, it's just not so easy anymore.

Melody Maker
June 14, 1997
by Victoria Segal

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