Travis Writing To Reach You/ Green Behind The Ears/ Only Molly Knows/ Yeah Yeah Yeah Yeah/ High as A Kite (Sony, 1999)Travis Why Does It Always Rain On Me?/ Village Man/ Driftwood (live)/ ...Baby One More Time/ Multimedia (Sony, 1999)
Travis Driftwood/ Writing To Reach You (live)/ Good Day To Die (live)/ Baby One More Time (live) (Sony, 2000)
Travis Turn/ River/ Days Of Our Lives/ Heart Of Gold (live)/ Baby One More Time (live) (Sony, 2000)
Welcome to a Travis-a-thon this time. This is part one.
I went through a period of infatuation brought on by their stupendious The Man Who album.
All of these A sides come from that parent album and they are all fabulous songs.
Weird how the peculiar alchemy of a place and time can coalesce around a band like Travis. The combination of smart, well produced music (by Nigel Godrich), layers of guitars and Fran Healy's smoooth emotive vocals all lined up on these songs from The Man Who and the band haven't really been able to reproduce that form or evolve beyond them since in such a impressive way since.
Why Does It Always Rain On Me? is the knock out punch here (although Turn comes a close second). Just a great song with a great vibe: slight melancholy, slight triumph, slight self deprecation. It's a cathartic singalong delight.
All captured perfectly in the video below.
Hidden gems: The purple patch extends its glow to the B sides - none of the extra studio tracks, amazingly, appear on the parent album.
River (the Joni Mitchell song) is a highlight - a perfect song for Travis: I wish I had a river I could skate away on...mmmmmmmmmm
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