Yahoo! Music Album Review

Released on 29/09/08
Label: Red Telephone Box

Poor old Andy Dunlop. Observing the diligent Travis guitarist over the past decade (particularly since pre-Coldplay elbow-in-the-bath-water album "The Man Who") adding dependable twinkles and sub-Teenage Fanclub niceties to Fran Healey's patchy, populist song craft, he seems to so desperately hanker for something more. This is verified at live shows the moment early-single "All I Wanna Do Is Rock" ratchets forth and in an instant he is Hendrix, he is Vicious, he is Townsend, teetering atop his amp, contorting and wrestling elastic, petulant fuzz from his axe. And then, in a blink, he'll be back on his mark playing "Sing".

This sixth Travis album, "Ode To J. Smith", must feel a little like supping manna at the rock'n'roll crossroads then. "Chinese Blues", a tour of Oasis' late '90s output - a little "Acquiesce", a lot of "D'you Know What I Mean" - affords him the opportunity to cream off groaning licks of distorted melodrama and dreams of echoing aircraft hangers and vast audiences. And he tosses a solo into "Something Anything" that Justin Hawkins might not technically need anymore, but will surely now be missing nonetheless.

Then there's "J. Smith", stencilling to the point of plagiarism Roxy Music's "Love Is The Drug", but also injecting sneaky "Bohemian Rhapsody" harmonies, neo-gothic apocalypse chants and brief MC5 freak-outs to boot. Believe it. At three minutes all in it's easily their most pounds-per-square-inch gamut of songwriting yet and provides one of a number of potential amp-tottering moments for Andy. If any song of theirs was audacious enough to deserve its own ode, it is this one.

Invariably, as with most Travis albums, "Ode To J. Smith" is somewhat top-loaded and soon shakes it all out of its system. But since it non-too-subtly aspires to the plugged-in zest of their debut "Good Feeling", rather than its four milder successors, its comfort zone isn't allowed segue to a flatline. The Snow Patrol-twinned "Song To Self" stays upright, and "Last Words" is just-above-ballad pace ELO, but a banjo-lining and yo-yo guitar shields them from the cloying AOR depths of The Feeling and their ilk. "Quite Free", true to the vagueness of its title, might achieve little, but hits on the wider truth of their successes; Travis have always been Quite Good, sometimes a little more, rarely less. This album heads a perceived slide into insignificance off at the pass and ensures the status quo.

    by James Berry