eing 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?