Travis (Live)

Travis celebrated their first live performance in the UK for five years, in an emphatic style at the O2 Academy in Bristol this past Saturday night. The venue was filled to capacity and the anticipation had been built up very nicely – there was some excellent support provided by Thomas J Speight, definitely a name to look out for – before the band came out onto the stage. The set fittingly opened with ‘Mother’ (the opening track from their latest album “Where You Stand” and also the latest single) for which the stage was coated in darkness, save for a single spotlight illuminating Fran Healy during the early strains, before erupting into brilliant light as the main tune kicked in. Off the back of that opener the band immediately followed up with ‘Selfish Jean’ which really got the crowd involved. 

The set-list for the evening is comprised of a healthy mix of old favourites and new material (the only thing that was missing was a single track from “Ode To J. Smith”). There were some surprises in the set such as ‘Pipe Dreams’ (from “The Invisible Band”) but the majority of the set was comprised of the band’s biggest hits and singles – not that this was a bad thing! Fran openly admitted that he can’t hit high notes quite as easily as Dougie can; following a rendition of new track ‘Moving’, which he expressed in eloquent terms (“You could not fit a mustard-seed between the cheeks of my arse!”)

The energy of the show never really dropped, even during quieter songs. Fran told a story about the difficulties he had at home growing up with an abusive father, and recited Philip Larkin’s “This Be The Verse” before the band played ‘Re-Offender’, which was then followed by the slightly more light-hearted ‘Where You Stand’. Fran also talked about becoming a father, and how such a significant event changes everything; this section was punctuated with ‘My Eyes’ (which he wrote around the time of his son’s birth in 2007) and ‘Reminder’ (from the new album, seven years later).

After this came an array of the band’s most famous numbers: ‘Writing To Reach You’, ‘Side’, ‘Closer’ and ‘Sing’. I was enjoying the show so much I kept worrying that any of these tracks could have been the end of the set, but luckily they weren’t. Then towards the end of the main set-list they played a couple of slightly rarer numbers ‘Slide Show’ and ‘Blue Flashing Light’ before the set closed out with a performance of ‘Turn’, which even saw Dougie take over the lead vocals for the second verse.

The encore brought the band right back to their early days, and utilised several songs from their debut album “Good Feeling”, including the title track, ‘Tied To The 90s’ (on request from the audience) and ‘All I Wanna Do Is Rock’ which was the first song the band ever performed together, over seventeen years ago at The Horseshoe in Glasgow. Andy climbed up onto a stack of speakers for his guitar solo, and somehow cut himself above his eye whilst jumping down. The band all stood together around a single microphone to perform ‘Flowers In The Window’ and then they closed out the night with a performance of their biggest hit: ‘Why Does It Always Rain On Me?’ which saw the entire audience jumping up and down – apart from those up on the balcony, for fear that the structure wouldn’t take the strain!

It was a very good time to see the band perform live, not just because they have accumulated so many crowd pleasing tunes by this stage in their careers, but also because the time spent away from live shows has left the band eager to return. The band are clearly thrilled to be performing live once again, and towards the end of the night Fran thanked everyone for coming, and says that live gigs are what bring bands closest to their fans.