| Travis — 12 Memories (2003) |
Travis — 12 Memories
Location: Glasgow, Scotland, UK
Album release: October 11, 2003
Recorded: Late 2001–Early 2003
Record Label: Independiente, Epic
Formats: CD, LP, cassette, download
Duration: 50:20
Tracks:
01. Quicksand (2:39)
02. The Beautiful Occupation (3:46)
03. Re-Offender (3:48)
04. Peace The Fuck Out (2:56)
05. How Many Hearts (4:46)
06. Paperclips (3:36)
07. Somewhere Else (3:13)
08. Love Will Come Through (3:40)
09. Mid-Life Krysis (3:39)
10. Happy To Hang Around (3:34)
11. Walking Down The Hill (14:43)
12. Some Sad Songs (hidden track) 4:46
Japanese Bonus Tracks:
13. "Definition of Wrong" — 3:33
14. "12th Memory" — 4:38
° All songs written by Fran Healy.
Producer: Travis, Tchad Blake, Steve Orchard
Personnel:
° Fran Healy — vocals, guitar, piano
° Andy Dunlop — guitar
° Dougie Payne — bass guitar
° Neil Primrose — drums
Former members:
° Geoff Martyn — keyboards (1990–1994)
° Chris Martyn — bass guitar (1990–1994)
CREDITS:
° Tchad Blake Mixing, Producer
° Natalia Bonner Violin
° Tom Bowes Violin
° Giles Broadbent Violin
° Ralph Broadbent Violin
° Catherine Browning Violin
° Ian Burdge Cello
° Gillon Cameron Violin
° Reiad Chibah Viola
° Anton Corbijn Photography
° Frances Dewar Violin
° Richard George Violin
° Fran Healy Composer
° Susie Hug Vocals (Background)
° Stephen Hussey Violin
° Jenny King Violin
° Claire Lewis Assistant Engineer
° Bob Ludwig Mastering
° Andy MacDonald A&R
° Zoe Martlew Cello
° Millennia Strings Strings
° Darragh Morgan Violin
° Steve Orchard Engineer, Producer
° James Pullman Viola
° Red Dog Vocals
° Jenny Sacha Violin
° Les Scott Artist Coordination
° Lucy Shaw Double Bass
° Adrian Smith Viola
° Marcus Barcham Stevens Violin
° Joby Talbot Conductor, String Arrangements
° Travis Design, Primary Artist, Producer
° Ruth Williams Violin
° Sara Wilson Cello
° Chris Worsey Cello
Website: http://www.travisonline.com/ / Fran Healy: http://www.franhealy.com/
Review by MacKenzie Wilson — Score: ***
° As much heat as the group received for The Invisible Band not matching the charm of The Man Who, Travis is still a good pop band. To imagine a world without them and their lovely and amusing songs would be a sad thing. In fact, their fourth album, 12 Memories, might never have been if drummer Neil Primrose hadn't survived a tragic dive while vacationing in France in summer 2002. Primrose sustained a spinal injury in a pool accident; thankfully the odds of a recovery were good, and Primrose went through surgery without any complications. 12 Memories is a dark reflection of that time, not to mention a heavy soundscape looking at violence as a whole that stems from a post-September 11th way of life. 12 Memories is their most mature, most explicit, and most somber album, and fans looking for Travis to resort back to the blazing riffs of "All I Wanna Do Is Rock" obviously didn't come of age with the band as they should have. The world's a fragile place, and Healy wants to talk about it. He's on his soapbox and instead of pointing a finger in disgust, he and Travis craft beautiful melodies that do just as much damage. From slagging off a media-obsessed America and its political regime on the jaunty, new wave-tinged "The Beautiful Occupation" to the soft piano-pounce of "How Many Hearts," 12 Memories flows without any preconceptions of what Travis released previously. They really don't care. What they care about is love and spreading it through song. Healy's look back at his mum's spousal abuse on "Re-Offender" finds Travis maintaining a sweet, basic rock sound and hitting you hard in the face. If you're able to appreciate the pleasure and point they bring as a whole, 12 Memories will be a fine listen. If you're hoping they took the Coldplay route, you're in the wrong place.
Fortaken: www.allmusic.com
——————————————————————————————————————————————————————————
In french:
° "Il ne faut pas demander l'impossible a Travis. Quand il entre en studio pour enregistrer, le quartette de Francis Healy n'a qu'une idée en tete : réaliser un bel ouvrage, peaufiné avec classe, constitué de ballades en tempo moyen qui s'incrustent dans la mémoire des la premiere écoute, jusqu'a enteter. La formule est simple. Redoutablement efficace aussi. 12 Memories, particulierement introspectif avec ses accents hérités de Radiohead (influence récurrente en 2003), ne déroge pas a la regle, en distillant son lot de perles pop dont les deux premiers morceaux sont les plus significatifs. Sur "The Beatiful Occupation", le groupe prend meme position sur le conflit irakien."
° Un quatrieme album plus personnel et intimiste, mais le charme est toujours présent du début a la fin.
:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::
Chart performance:
Chart (2003) / Peak position:
UK Album Chart #3
Norwegian Top 40 #4
Austria Albums Top 75 #8
Denmark Albums Top 40 #8
Swiss Albums Top 100 #8
German Albums Top 75 #9
Irish Album Charts #17
French Albums Top 100 #19
Swedish Albums Top 60 #22
New Zealand Albums Top 40 #34
Belgium Albums Top 50 #38
US Billboard 200 #41
Australia Albums Top 50 #42
Poland Albums Top 50 #49
Dutch Albums Top 100 #64
° BPI: Platinum
° IFPI NOR: Gold
° RIANZ: Gold
:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::
Reviewed by: Dave Queen
Reviewed on: 2003-10-10
Score: D
——————————————————————————————————————————————————————————
° Being an ‘invisible’ (too hubristic to be ‘nonexistent’) band makes Travis ‘rock’ (not ‘pop’) so they must be evaluated in a ‘rock’ context. Their difficulties in said context can be explained by the science of Geo-Alcoholics. The West is trisected into three regions, the temperate Beer Zone, the frigid Spirit Zone and the Mediterranean Wine Zone. Beer is the preferred drink for collectivised industrial workforces under rigid time constraints and its properties of focussing aggression within strictly defined time/space parameters are perfectly appropriate for a modernist project like ‘rock’ music. This is why the only regions that consistently provide good examples of which are the USA, England, Germany and those sellouts Japan. The other zones face ‘unique challenges’ like spastics do. Mediterranean wino music sounds the way it does because being mildly buzzed all day induces a skewed absurdist perspective (introspective/sensual, not extroverted/kinetic) which combined with steady-state-of-grace Catholicism lends itself to an aesthetic of diffident stasis, entirely un-‘rock’. ‘Spirit Zone’ culture has a different set of problems. Spirit drinkers like to exist in an asynchronous delirium as seers and mystics disdainful of mundane modernist concerns like formal concision or conventional speech. This results in freeform one-chord doodling with pre-human bellowing and yowling on top, or ‘folk music.’ How to cram the infinite toothpaste into a finite tube? That’s why Scottish bands all sound like either the Beach Boys or VU. Beach Boys for stacking transcendence-signifiers as vertical interlocking bits and VU for presenting their primary materials in such an essentialist manner as to prevent any form of secondary cultural uses, except to be ripped off by Scottish bands. Also the reason Travis is ‘rock’ is that in ‘pop,’ the lyrics have to be a bit better than Bernard Sumner’s. I think that goes even for yowling windswept folk too. I didn’t actually get to the last two tracks because as soon as Fran started repeating “you’re wasting my time, you’re wasting my time, you’re wasting my time” I suddenly realised that he was channelling a great truth and took the hint.
° Travis have enjoyed a comfortable and rewarding niche as an ECM Kings of Leon or an ESP-Disk Boyzone for some time now. There’s a bit on here that sounds like “The Gift” and a guitar solo that’s as good as “I Heard Her Call My Name.” No “I Write the Songs” though. It’s not all Velvet Boys, “The Beautiful Occupation” is the music from “Don’t Stand So Close to Me” with the lyrics from “Driven to Tears” and if the title wasn’t so Eddy-Veddy REM it’d be Bad Boy-circa 1999 hit material for sure. “Peace the Fuck Out” is Epstein-Barr Stone Roses for world-weary wistful whiskey-drinkers. There’s a line about “too much shit coming out your mouth.” How does one get into that state, I wonder? Being cornholed by Tetsuo after too many deep-fried Mars bars? Maybe it’s a shout-out to their compatriots “bobbing for apples” in the King’s Cross station toilets for SlimFast money, which would be a reassuring indicator that Travis still have an audience. I’m curious, are they fixtures yet or are they in trouble? Like, I’m making a mix CD for someone and it’s an incredibly difficult one because she’s into crap like Ben Harper and Lemon Jelly, and I can’t even impress her with a Travis promo CD because they’re ‘too boring’ even for her! Maybe they should copy the Delgadoes and have their stage sets designed by outsider artists like Henry (reclusive lunatic who died leaving a flat full of wall-sized canvasses featuring little girls with penises drawn on them as he’d never seen a naked girl in real life!) Darger, or perhaps Bible John?
Fortaken: http://www.stylusmagazine.com/
:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::
© Photo credit: Fran Healy /// I was on the plane today, heading for Oslo and a weekend of festivals, the first one called Trollrock and the second Sommerfesten which I attended last year. I can’t fathom how quickly time has moved. It’s been a whole year since we hung out on Giske and had fun with all of our great friends. This time though the trip is not a solo affair. This year the rest of the band are here too. We just spent a week in New York in a room bashing song ideas into shape. I think we have a record. Some lyrics need completing and a few middle 8′s but it’s pretty much there so it’s good to be coming here so soon after.
We all met at Oslo airport and got in a little transit van driving for 3 or so hours through some beautiful scenery, sun setting slowly over mountains, reflecting on fjord. I listened to Scott Walker – Scott 2 and reviewed the new Travis songs recorded on a single mic in the room we were in. They sound great. Dougie has written a couple of gems and Andy too. We are planning to return to Giske in October to record the as yet untitled 7th album. More about that later. — Fran Healy —
| Travis — 12 Memories (2003) |
Travis — 12 Memories
© Photo credit: Fran Healy /// I was on the plane today, heading for Oslo and a weekend of festivals, the first one called Trollrock and the second Sommerfesten which I attended last year. I can’t fathom how quickly time has moved. It’s been a whole year since we hung out on Giske and had fun with all of our great friends. This time though the trip is not a solo affair. This year the rest of the band are here too. We just spent a week in New York in a room bashing song ideas into shape. I think we have a record. Some lyrics need completing and a few middle 8′s but it’s pretty much there so it’s good to be coming here so soon after.
Location: Glasgow, Scotland, UK
Album release: October 11, 2003
Recorded: Late 2001–Early 2003
Record Label: Independiente, Epic
Formats: CD, LP, cassette, download
Duration: 50:20
Tracks:
01. Quicksand (2:39)
02. The Beautiful Occupation (3:46)
03. Re-Offender (3:48)
04. Peace The Fuck Out (2:56)
05. How Many Hearts (4:46)
06. Paperclips (3:36)
07. Somewhere Else (3:13)
08. Love Will Come Through (3:40)
09. Mid-Life Krysis (3:39)
10. Happy To Hang Around (3:34)
11. Walking Down The Hill (14:43)
12. Some Sad Songs (hidden track) 4:46
Japanese Bonus Tracks:
13. "Definition of Wrong" — 3:33
14. "12th Memory" — 4:38
° All songs written by Fran Healy.
Producer: Travis, Tchad Blake, Steve Orchard
Personnel:
° Fran Healy — vocals, guitar, piano
° Andy Dunlop — guitar
° Dougie Payne — bass guitar
° Neil Primrose — drums
Former members:
° Geoff Martyn — keyboards (1990–1994)
° Chris Martyn — bass guitar (1990–1994)
CREDITS:
° Tchad Blake Mixing, Producer
° Natalia Bonner Violin
° Tom Bowes Violin
° Giles Broadbent Violin
° Ralph Broadbent Violin
° Catherine Browning Violin
° Ian Burdge Cello
° Gillon Cameron Violin
° Reiad Chibah Viola
° Anton Corbijn Photography
° Frances Dewar Violin
° Richard George Violin
° Fran Healy Composer
° Susie Hug Vocals (Background)
° Stephen Hussey Violin
° Jenny King Violin
° Claire Lewis Assistant Engineer
° Bob Ludwig Mastering
° Andy MacDonald A&R
° Zoe Martlew Cello
° Millennia Strings Strings
° Darragh Morgan Violin
° Steve Orchard Engineer, Producer
° James Pullman Viola
° Red Dog Vocals
° Jenny Sacha Violin
° Les Scott Artist Coordination
° Lucy Shaw Double Bass
° Adrian Smith Viola
° Marcus Barcham Stevens Violin
° Joby Talbot Conductor, String Arrangements
° Travis Design, Primary Artist, Producer
° Ruth Williams Violin
° Sara Wilson Cello
° Chris Worsey Cello
Website: http://www.travisonline.com/ / Fran Healy: http://www.franhealy.com/
Review by MacKenzie Wilson — Score: ***
° As much heat as the group received for The Invisible Band not matching the charm of The Man Who, Travis is still a good pop band. To imagine a world without them and their lovely and amusing songs would be a sad thing. In fact, their fourth album, 12 Memories, might never have been if drummer Neil Primrose hadn't survived a tragic dive while vacationing in France in summer 2002. Primrose sustained a spinal injury in a pool accident; thankfully the odds of a recovery were good, and Primrose went through surgery without any complications. 12 Memories is a dark reflection of that time, not to mention a heavy soundscape looking at violence as a whole that stems from a post-September 11th way of life. 12 Memories is their most mature, most explicit, and most somber album, and fans looking for Travis to resort back to the blazing riffs of "All I Wanna Do Is Rock" obviously didn't come of age with the band as they should have. The world's a fragile place, and Healy wants to talk about it. He's on his soapbox and instead of pointing a finger in disgust, he and Travis craft beautiful melodies that do just as much damage. From slagging off a media-obsessed America and its political regime on the jaunty, new wave-tinged "The Beautiful Occupation" to the soft piano-pounce of "How Many Hearts," 12 Memories flows without any preconceptions of what Travis released previously. They really don't care. What they care about is love and spreading it through song. Healy's look back at his mum's spousal abuse on "Re-Offender" finds Travis maintaining a sweet, basic rock sound and hitting you hard in the face. If you're able to appreciate the pleasure and point they bring as a whole, 12 Memories will be a fine listen. If you're hoping they took the Coldplay route, you're in the wrong place.
Fortaken: www.allmusic.com
——————————————————————————————————————————————————————————
In french:
° "Il ne faut pas demander l'impossible a Travis. Quand il entre en studio pour enregistrer, le quartette de Francis Healy n'a qu'une idée en tete : réaliser un bel ouvrage, peaufiné avec classe, constitué de ballades en tempo moyen qui s'incrustent dans la mémoire des la premiere écoute, jusqu'a enteter. La formule est simple. Redoutablement efficace aussi. 12 Memories, particulierement introspectif avec ses accents hérités de Radiohead (influence récurrente en 2003), ne déroge pas a la regle, en distillant son lot de perles pop dont les deux premiers morceaux sont les plus significatifs. Sur "The Beatiful Occupation", le groupe prend meme position sur le conflit irakien."
° Un quatrieme album plus personnel et intimiste, mais le charme est toujours présent du début a la fin.
:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::
Chart performance:
Chart (2003) / Peak position:
UK Album Chart #3
Norwegian Top 40 #4
Austria Albums Top 75 #8
Denmark Albums Top 40 #8
Swiss Albums Top 100 #8
German Albums Top 75 #9
Irish Album Charts #17
French Albums Top 100 #19
Swedish Albums Top 60 #22
New Zealand Albums Top 40 #34
Belgium Albums Top 50 #38
US Billboard 200 #41
Australia Albums Top 50 #42
Poland Albums Top 50 #49
Dutch Albums Top 100 #64
° BPI: Platinum
° IFPI NOR: Gold
° RIANZ: Gold
:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::
Reviewed by: Dave Queen
Reviewed on: 2003-10-10
Score: D
——————————————————————————————————————————————————————————
° Being an ‘invisible’ (too hubristic to be ‘nonexistent’) band makes Travis ‘rock’ (not ‘pop’) so they must be evaluated in a ‘rock’ context. Their difficulties in said context can be explained by the science of Geo-Alcoholics. The West is trisected into three regions, the temperate Beer Zone, the frigid Spirit Zone and the Mediterranean Wine Zone. Beer is the preferred drink for collectivised industrial workforces under rigid time constraints and its properties of focussing aggression within strictly defined time/space parameters are perfectly appropriate for a modernist project like ‘rock’ music. This is why the only regions that consistently provide good examples of which are the USA, England, Germany and those sellouts Japan. The other zones face ‘unique challenges’ like spastics do. Mediterranean wino music sounds the way it does because being mildly buzzed all day induces a skewed absurdist perspective (introspective/sensual, not extroverted/kinetic) which combined with steady-state-of-grace Catholicism lends itself to an aesthetic of diffident stasis, entirely un-‘rock’. ‘Spirit Zone’ culture has a different set of problems. Spirit drinkers like to exist in an asynchronous delirium as seers and mystics disdainful of mundane modernist concerns like formal concision or conventional speech. This results in freeform one-chord doodling with pre-human bellowing and yowling on top, or ‘folk music.’ How to cram the infinite toothpaste into a finite tube? That’s why Scottish bands all sound like either the Beach Boys or VU. Beach Boys for stacking transcendence-signifiers as vertical interlocking bits and VU for presenting their primary materials in such an essentialist manner as to prevent any form of secondary cultural uses, except to be ripped off by Scottish bands. Also the reason Travis is ‘rock’ is that in ‘pop,’ the lyrics have to be a bit better than Bernard Sumner’s. I think that goes even for yowling windswept folk too. I didn’t actually get to the last two tracks because as soon as Fran started repeating “you’re wasting my time, you’re wasting my time, you’re wasting my time” I suddenly realised that he was channelling a great truth and took the hint.
° Travis have enjoyed a comfortable and rewarding niche as an ECM Kings of Leon or an ESP-Disk Boyzone for some time now. There’s a bit on here that sounds like “The Gift” and a guitar solo that’s as good as “I Heard Her Call My Name.” No “I Write the Songs” though. It’s not all Velvet Boys, “The Beautiful Occupation” is the music from “Don’t Stand So Close to Me” with the lyrics from “Driven to Tears” and if the title wasn’t so Eddy-Veddy REM it’d be Bad Boy-circa 1999 hit material for sure. “Peace the Fuck Out” is Epstein-Barr Stone Roses for world-weary wistful whiskey-drinkers. There’s a line about “too much shit coming out your mouth.” How does one get into that state, I wonder? Being cornholed by Tetsuo after too many deep-fried Mars bars? Maybe it’s a shout-out to their compatriots “bobbing for apples” in the King’s Cross station toilets for SlimFast money, which would be a reassuring indicator that Travis still have an audience. I’m curious, are they fixtures yet or are they in trouble? Like, I’m making a mix CD for someone and it’s an incredibly difficult one because she’s into crap like Ben Harper and Lemon Jelly, and I can’t even impress her with a Travis promo CD because they’re ‘too boring’ even for her! Maybe they should copy the Delgadoes and have their stage sets designed by outsider artists like Henry (reclusive lunatic who died leaving a flat full of wall-sized canvasses featuring little girls with penises drawn on them as he’d never seen a naked girl in real life!) Darger, or perhaps Bible John?
Fortaken: http://www.stylusmagazine.com/
:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::
We all met at Oslo airport and got in a little transit van driving for 3 or so hours through some beautiful scenery, sun setting slowly over mountains, reflecting on fjord. I listened to Scott Walker – Scott 2 and reviewed the new Travis songs recorded on a single mic in the room we were in. They sound great. Dougie has written a couple of gems and Andy too. We are planning to return to Giske in October to record the as yet untitled 7th album. More about that later. — Fran Healy —