Fox Theater

Every great picture tells a story. It’s an adage borne out dramatically by the stunning cover art of Travis’s tenth studio album ‘L.A. Times’. Echoing some of their most beloved records – The Man Who, The Invisible Band and The Boy With No Name – we’re once again greeted by the sight of four distant figures, dwarfed to the point of imperceptibility by their vast surroundings. And yet, there beneath the concrete and glitter of downtown Los Angeles at night, there’s something powerful about the fact that these are the same four musicians who first came to prominence in 1996 with their debut EP ‘All I Want To Do Is Rock’. An unbroken line-up for an unbroken band – Fran Healy (vocals, guitar); Andy Dunlop (guitar); Dougie Payne (bass); Neil Primrose (drums) – the coordinates of their extraordinary journey together marked by this latest in a series of arresting images by world-renowned photographer Stefan Ruiz (New York Times, The New Yorker, Vogue, Time).

That cover image is reflected in turn by the songs that make up ‘L.A. Times’. By Fran’s own account, their most “personal album since The Man Who”, the album’s ten tracks see their creator marking his 50th year on this planet by, inevitably, trying to make sense of the road travelled to this point. He looks back at Travis’s early years, imagining a bay of little sailboats “with all the bands and artists sitting in them, waiting on that freak gust of wind to blow them to fame and fortune.” For some it never comes. For Travis, it would yield a run of hits which included modern standards such as Sing, Why Does It Always Rain On Me and Driftwood, and lifted them to unimaginable heights. Millions of albums sold (‘The Man Who’ is 9x Platinum certified in the UK alone); multiple wins at the BRITs, Ivor Novello and Q Awards. They’ve been the subject of an award-winning feature length documentary (‘Almost Fashionable’) and Fran has elicited acclaim from the likes of Paul McCartney, Elton John and Graham Nash – also songwriters whose ability to divine a timeless melody out of thin air has sustained them through the decades.

Usually, inspiration descends upon you quickly. But not always. ‘L.A. Times’ marks the completion of a song that started to take shape over 25 years previously. It was during Travis’s first ever visit to New York that Fran came up with the music that, decades later, would form the basis of Naked In New York City. Those timorous, tentative strummed chords represent the baby steps of a young man walking a line between fear and euphoria, straining to marshall his potential. Sometimes it takes decades of hindsight to figure out what your subconscious mind was trying to say. “It was Dougie who remembered the song and pressurised me into finishing it off.” And when Fran presented the song to producer Tony Hoffer (Air, Beck, Phoenix), the latter further foregrounded the song’s vulnerability by insisting that the newly finished track be recorded live in a single take. The hair-raisingly exquisite results speak for themselves.

Fran Healy’s voice trails off with an almost apologetic shrug. He makes it sound like the most natural thing in the world, having the frontmen of Coldplay and The Killers drop by to lend their voices to one of your songs. But, of course, it’s a measure of the esteem in which Travis are still held by the bands who emerged in their wake and sought to emulate them. And that’s why it matters that the four musicians just about visible beneath the L.A. skyline are still together, still honouring the unique chemistry that brought them together 28 years ago and 5,000 miles away. Yes, you’re a long time in the ground, but if you find a band of kindred souls to help turn your truth into melody, and you do it to the best of your ability, then maybe, just maybe, your songs might escape that fate. Travis’s unassumingly extraordinary body of work bears testament to that outlook. And, in L.A. Times, they’ve delivered a record that stands shoulder to shoulder with their very best.