Man Who, The - Travis > Reviews > Travis, Texas and The Taxi Driver.

Author's product rating:   

Originality
Lyrics
Quality and consistency of tracks
How does it compare to the artist's other releases
Value for Money

Advantages:	Good songs, good band ,indie from a new angle .
Disadvantages:	None much, can be predictable at times .

Recommend to potential buyers:

yes

Full review

Not Robert De Niro's sociopath Travis Bickel in Taxi Driver, but Harry Dean Stanton's confused protagonists in Wim Wendor’s film Paris, Texas. This band owes more to the sweet sounds of American Country than the savage sound of New York streets. Front man Fran Healey speaks with the voice of a Glasgow shipyard clerk and moans on like a wet Monday morning, but when he sings he is a flower child in the summer of love.
This is a more matured Travis than their debut the rockier Good Feeling. It is a similar transition Radiohead made from “Pablo Honey” to "The Bends", but not quite. The singles, “Why Does It Always Rain On Me?” and “Driftwood” are David Gates and Bread with a little less butter, while Turn has them Turn, Turn, Turning into The Byrds. This is the soundtrack to Oasis becoming married with children.
The darker shades of this album share the same themes as Wendor’s film: lost souls searching for their identity in world in which they feel uninvited. “Driftwood” speaks of watching a close friend slowly disintegrate on their aimless journey through life with no more help than tying up the story to its natural conclusion on “She’s So Strange”. "As You Are" is an anthem for escape. “The Fear” and “The Last of the Laughter” has summer turning to autumn and blue skies turning grey respectively over a blanket of folk-rock. It is like Buddy Holly and Eugene O’Neil crying into their drinks in the basement of a folk club on a wet Wednesday afternoon.
Before Travis it was Glass Onion, an awful name for a rock band but it does lend us a clue to Fran’s pop sensibilities. Slide Show attempts to do for post Brit-Pop culture what Lennon did to the sixties on that song from The White Album. It throws anthems of a generation like “Wonderwall” and “A Design For Life” to the gutter, unveiling the hypocrisy of a movement dedicated “ to the kids” that started taking itself a little too seriously. In this three-minute sign off they have torn apart the dying animal before it has a chance of becoming one of the dinosaurs it snarled its lip at. It is executed with such surgical precision as to leave all others with the choice of revolution or obscurity.
It is slightly ironic that the company this song keeps proves Mr.Healey does not practice what he preaches.
Travis may well unravel their story in the same way Harry Dean Stanton’s Travis did, and find that the identity they were searching for was exactly what they were running away from in the first place.