Travis Talks New Album
May 25, 2001 -- After selling more than 3 million copies of 1999's The Man Who, Glasgow, Scotland's Travis has completed its third full-length and the band is awaiting its June 12th release.
"Right now we're trying to get distance from the record," bassist Dougie Payne says. "The process of recording is so involving. It's just the five of us [including producer Nigel Goodrich] in a crazy little bubble where we existed and nobody else did. We're slowly but surely extricating ourselves. At the moment we're familiarizing ourselves with the record as a record as opposed to what we've just been doing."
The process of leaving the bubble includes dealing with Herculean amounts of press interviews and TV appearances, including taping an appearance on U.K. television program Top of the Pops.
"Time is tight, I'll tell you that," says bassist Dougie Payne. "We were back in Glasgow the other day for six hours of interviews. We got a chance to go for a walk for half an hour. Glasgow is just beautiful, and I felt a bit homesick. I kind of wanted to go back up and just check out the scene and go to the clubs and all the bars that we used to go through.
"In every campaign, there's milestones, and one of them is the first time you have to mime your music," he adds of the recent television appearance where they were asked to lip-synch. "It's funny. It's nice for a band to play music."
The 12-track album, titled The Invisible Band, took seven weeks to record in a Los Angeles studio, spread over a period of six months. At the helm was Goodrich, who produced The Man Who and also Radiohead's OK Computer and Kid A.
"We barely even talked about the record before we started recording," Payne says. "The only thing I remember Nigel saying at the bar the night before we started recording was, 'Let's get creative.' That's just the Travis way — things are completely accidental. Nigel sort of maneuvers you into a position in the studio where things happen by accident and you get all these serendipitous things that just work.
"The magic that's on records is not the noise or the notes. The magic on records is the energy. If the relationships in the studio are strained, then you'll be able to hear that on the record."
The album's first single, "Sing", is a joyous sing-along, a trait of the new album that differs from the introspective The Man Who. Travis will be touring with Dido through the United States, but, if last year's U.S. tours are any indication, it'll be headlining stadiums again soon.
"Last year we started playing at a place in San Francisco called The Bottom of the Hill, and that was an appropriate place to start. We did the Troubador in L.A. in February and there were 300 people. We went back six months later and there were 600 people. Then we came back a month later and it was 1200 people. We supported Oasis as well at the Universal Amphitheatre, and one of the promoters said, 'Oh, in a year's time you'll be doing this yourselves.' Four months later we were back playing our own show at the Amphitheatre. That was amazing.
"You have to be prepared to fall on your arse. If you do that then your life will seem longer. And I think that's what getting up on stage is all about."