Travis - The Boy WIth No Name - Tiscali Music Reviews

7th May 2007

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Three years on from their last outing '12 Memories', there is a palpable excitement within the Travis camp and a genuine enthusiasm for a return to the road. Having long been regarded as the trailblazers for the emotionally engaging pop anthem, they can truly claim, on their fifth album 'The Boy With No Name', to have re-discovered what made us love them in the first place.

From the warm ambience of 'Closer' to the menacing harmony of 'Big Chair', the songs here carry a direct lineage from 'The Man Who' through to their present day contemporaries. Another cryptic album title (Healy and wife Nora couldn't settle on a name for their son Clay for some weeks and this was how he was known), 'The Boy With No Name' shimmers with infectious melodies and timeless choruses wrapped around bittersweet songs of deep love and regret and a whole lot more besides.

Album highlights include aforementioned 'Big Chair' with its restless bass line, whilst 'Selfish Jean' delivers Motown bass and expansive Phil Spector production. An Ode to Fran's then unborn son Clay, 'My Eyes' is classic Travis; a joyful chorus journeyed to via an equally catchy prelude of "Welcome in, welcome in...".

'Battleships', meanwhile, boasts a painfully honest lyric about relationship strife when two people who love each other are simply not seeing eye to eye.

Whilst Travis took the decision to record the album themselves they turned to long time collaborator Nigel Godrich to look after additional production on several of the tracks.