The Invisible Band was a huge commercial success for Travis. Following massive sales and a stressful national tour, drummer Neil Primrose severely injured his back in a swimming accident, kicking the band off the road and out of the studio for months, in which time the state of the world edged into mild chaos, with wars and protests raging. The state of the music industry had changed, too, with rough garage rock and Radiohead's electronic-tinged arty noodling being the only grace from otherwise dire charts filled with soulless dance-pop. All this coupled with some personal problems for the band made it inevitable that, were they to return, something different would be needed. And in the second half of 2003 they released what was to be their most mature and, dare I say it, experimental album so far. We're not talking Stockhausen level experimentation here (not even Radiohead level, really), but the somber mood and fascinating production made 12 Memories the band's least commercial album to date.

Elsewhere in the album, things get a little weirder. The opening drum loop and string section in lead single Re-Offender suggested the band's sonic palette had become a little wider, but more surprising is the dramatic cello solo in album opener Quicksand, a song which also features two bizarre backing vocal sections; one sounding like a choir, the other the whole band grunting. The album's closing section features two more interesting tracks: Happy To Hang Around features a drum rhythm which sounds like Portishead covering When The Levee Breaks and a guitar solo stolen from Graham Coxon; Walking Down The Hill features more trip-hoppish drums, pizzacatto strings and, not for the first time on the album, beautiful tinkling pianos. The song is the most hopeful sounding on the record and closes the album on a beautiful, airy note (that is if you ignore the utterly cringe-worth hidden track Some Sad Song).
More crazy than these, however, is the album's centrepiece, Paperclips. A lo-fi cacophony of nonsense, the track sounds more like something The Coral would conceive than Travis. A slightly out of tune guitar battles against seemingly random percussion, a hammond organ that was stolen from a 1960s horror film, a strangely filtered clarinet, random background noise and, of all things, a whining dog. On top of the madness, Fran Healy intones a sad tale of his partner leaving him ("I don't want to see your face at my door/And I'll never leave like you, that's for sure"). The band has never recorded anything quite like it before and one hopes they continue in this path in the future.