Travis Live at Wembley - Tiscali Music News

2002-03-13

Travis battled hard against the notoriously bad atmospherics of Wembley arena last night to play a passionate, polished and enthused live set.

'We’ve held off playing these...big sheds on this tour up til now,’ said the bands frontman Fran Healey, addressing the crowd.

As previously mentioned, there has been a tide in the affairs of music journos of late to write Travis off as lacking a certain bite in the current climate of the kind of high energy rock swagger of the Hives, Strokes, or White Stripes. That their wistful, sometimes overly sentimental wanderings, especially from their current album The Invisible Band were somehow out of tune with the kids. As if somehow, by latching on to a winning formula – introspective, emotive, melodic songs – they had become...dare I say it...boring.

But not so last night; and it had nothing to do with drugs revelations. The performance, and the songs, were bristling with a kind of youthful energy.

They performed like it was the first night of their tour, like it was the first time they had played these tunes. First rule of live performance - if the band is bored of the songs, then the crowd surely will be.

The crowd were an integral part of the evening – and how could we not be? – singing along heartily from the off with the anthemic and energetic Sing, and moving on to a rousing Good Feeling and Writing to Reach You. Pausing only to issue a hasty greeting before the fourth track, Pipe Dreams, the band were starting to warm up.

Following As You Are, an uplifting version of the bubbling Driftwood was accompanied by some incredibly inventive visuals. The eerie image of a woman slowly trampolining appeared through a circle of red, green and blue light behind the band. In fact, the light show did much to lift the heavy roominess of the venue as the band continued to mix old material with newer songs - The Fear, Side, Last Train , followed and an incredibly well-delivered version of Indefinitely (where the great lyric ‘Time Exists just on your wrists, so don’t panic’, shone through). The audience again lent their lusty voices to Turn.

The quieter but delightful Flowers in the Window and the more experimental Humpty Dumpty Love Song came next. Why does it always rain on me? seemed to lack something for not being outdoors, and Slideshow sometimes dipped into a kind of knowing self-indulgence as pictures of the band appeared magically on a canvassy screen. However, Blue Flashing Light ended the first part of the show with a bang, a track with more angry live zest than the most of the tunes played from The Man Who.

Surely what stole the show in the encore was an immensely faithful rendition of Rocket Man, sung by the cheeky looking Doug. His bouncy bass playing was a highlight of the evening. Like the cult version of Baby One More Time, this was musically a very faithful rendition of the track, with crooning backing vocals from Fran and Andy Dunlop.

The crowd watched with a stunned reverence. Were they being ironic? Did they simply like the song? Then it struck home: their ability to openly celebrate good songwriting in their own music, and others – (to the point of doing an Elton John track) is Travis' enduring quality. Their heart-on-sleeve delivery is very contagious, be it a happy or sad song (‘life is both a major and a minor key’).

The band ended the evening in a suitably direct and upbeat fashion: All I Wanna Do Is Rock , Coming Around – backed by a member of the audience playing Grand Turismo on the giant screen - and Happy.

'This next song is about love…it’s about when you see someone and you just know you love ‘em. It can be with a lover, or a mate. It happened to us – we don’t make love, we make music together'.

Keep it up, Travis.

The single Flowers In The Window is out on March 25th.