Watching Travis live is hilarious, and not only because Fran Healy appears to be performing dressed as Inspector Gadget tonight (hat and coat – no actual gadgets, sadly).
They move around the stage like a band who don’t realise they’re not AC/DC. Dougie pulls poses and Andy shakes his guitar like a man possessed, with the sound of ‘Writing To Reach You’ emanating from the speakers. Rock on.
Fortunately, though, despite being mostly mellow on record, Travis somehow DO rock live. Maybe it’s something in the production of their records, which seems to engulf the tunes in a fog of guitar fuzz. Live on stage, everything suddenly seems clear – the clever riffs, the catchy choruses… the songwriting skills that everyone fell in love with in 1999 are still there after all.
While the hefty share of tracks from The Man Who (’Driftwood’, ‘Why Does It Always Rain On Me?’…) and Good Feeling (’All I Wanna Do Is Rock’, ‘Tied To The Nineties’, ‘More Than Us’!!!…) does their set enormous favours, tracks like ‘The Beautiful Occupation’, ‘Selfish Jean’ and ‘Side’ suddenly sound like they should have been firm favourites too.
The new album certainly doesn’t embarrass itself either, with its closing track ‘Song To Self’ especially standing out. There’s a time that Travis and Coldplay were comparable brands, but while Coldplay went epic and skyscraping and got bigger and bigger, Travis went moody and introverted and didn’t. But ‘Song To Self’ is HUGE. It is a number one radio menace waiting to happen and Chris Martin should be quaking in his boots.
Ending the night with a novelty cover of Katy Perry’s ‘I Kissed A Girl’ and, unsurprisingly, with the whole room jumping up and down to ‘Why Does It Always Rain On Me?’, Travis firmly assert that they are still an incredible band – even if they’re the kind you’ll always have to share with mum and dad.
//Fiona McKinlay