Travis, The Invisible Band: Press reviews

Travis play it safe with their third album

Press reviews of The Invisible Band.

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The London Evening Standard

As an indictment of both the lack of new ideas currently floating round the British music scene, and the record-buying public's willingness to accept that state of affairs, this album has a more poignant tale to tell. As Fran Healy sings on Pipe Dreams: "It all boils down to the same old thing." Never was a truer word offered on record.

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The Independent

The tragic thing and the thing that, I think, makes Travis intrinsically evil is the way their apathy, and the constant bland reassurances of songs such as Follow the Light and Safe, is hung on Healy's catchiest hooks and further sweetened with the finest atmospheres that the producer Nigel Godrich can provide. What kind of devious mind would use such persuasive melodies to promote such conservative attitudes? Apart, of course, from Tony Blair.

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The Guardian

The cover - Travis dwarfed by a centuries-old tree - and the line in Pipe Dreams, "Just a link in a chain, just a puppet on a string", the very title of the album imply that we're all insignificant in the grand scheme of things. But the point of pop music is to deny that, to make us feel wickedly alive with nothing more than a chord and a few coruscating words. I don't get that listening to Travis. I hear a strong album by a classic rock band who will grow to be the next U2, and it does nothing for me.

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The Times

While Healy hasn't written about rain this time, The Invisible Band is not what you would call an uplifting album. After Sing, the opening track, it's straight into the gloomy, downbeat Dear Diary, on which Healy actually does sound a lot like Thom Yorke. Fragile piano, gentle guitars, hardly any lyrics and a mean bit of moaning suggest he's depressed. "Dear Diary, what is wrong with me?" he sings, sounding slightly muffled, as though he can't even be bothered to open his mouth.