Artist: Travis
Title: Where You Stand
Genre: Post-Britpop / Indie Rock
Release Date: 19th August 2013
Label: Kobalt Music
Album Review
TRAVIS is a band of Scots who cleared out the path for the likes of COLDPLAY or KEANE. At one point the wave of Britpop was all over the place, but it has been steadily and surely waning and pushed behind into the annals of music history, even if COLDPLAY is still held up as a beacon of success of Rock in the mainstream attention, though I’d rather say fiercely held on to only for the sake of the illusion that the Ol’ Blighty still has something meaningful to be and say in terms of catchy and trendy music.
The seventh album of TRAVIS after a five year break seems to only demonstrate how the trend has lost its sheen. Indeed, after that break you’d expect a burst of energy and new ideas pulsing strongly, but that expectation is a sinker, in my case of Titanic proportions – it comes on flat tires of fizzled out ideas. However, they were and still are a pleasant band to listen to and at least they’re not trying to be crowd-pleasers like COLDPLAY and strike for the anthemic in a song at any cost. Still, that pleasantness feels like too much an effect of a soma pill, lack of tension and diversity is really like travelling on a flat line, this at times even means that even the pleasantness that could make it at least tolerable is gone and you just feel numbed to death – especially when it comes to ‘Another Guy’.
The song is numbness personified - a feeling so overwhelming that listening to it was a painful experience. It really felt like I was negated by a cloud of oblivion – maybe the success of the song lay in its potential to convert me into a believer because Hell seemed like so much better option. If you don’t want to be bored to death just skip it!!! In fact, you might just as well skip the whole album. It’s so tired and disappointing, and I say it even though, or especially, as I used to think of them the highest out of the Britpop crowd, they were certainly more sincere than their more successful brothers-in-music-arms. But even that sincerity is ringing on the exhausted.
Tracklist
01. Mother
02. Moving
03. Reminder
04. Where You Stand
05. Warming Sign
06. Another Guy
07. A Different Room
08. New Shoes
09. On My Wall
10. Boxes
11. The Big Screen
Line-up
Fran Healy – vocals, rhythm guitar
Dougie Payne – bass, backing vocals
Andy Dunlop – lead guitar, banjo, backing vocals
Neil Primrose – drums, percussions
Websites
http://www.travisonline.com / https://www.facebook.com/travistheband / https://twitter.com/travisband
Cover Picture
Rating
Music: 5
Sound: 7
Total: 6 / 10
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