RIYL: Travis, Travis, Travis
If you’re the principal songwriter and lead singer in a band, you will invariably be asked about going solo. If you actually decide to do it, prepare to be hit with one of the most unfair complaints in all of music: “It sounds just like your old band. Why bother going solo?”
The implication, of course, is that solo albums should sound drastically different than the artist’s day job, and for some, that is precisely the purpose. Most songwriters, though, write like they write, and asking them to change their approach is like asking them to breathe differently. No one ever accused Bryan Ferry of making solo albums that sounded too much like Roxy Music, and no one should be surprised, or disappointed, to discover that Wreckorder (pronounced ‘recorder’), the solo debut from Travis front man Fran Healy, sounds just like a Travis album. If anything, it’s cause for celebration, because it sounds like a The Man Who or The Invisible Band-era Travis album.
Lead track “In the Morning” is a slow-building minor key ballad with a galloping drum beat the likes of which Travis drummer Neil Primrose hasn’t seen in years. “Anything” would fit seamlessly next to anything from the Nigel Godrich-produced albums, and “Sing Me to Sleep,” a duet with Neko Case, trumps anything from the New Pornographers’ last album (and Case’s last solo album, for that matter). “Buttercups” is as perfect a first single for the album as one could dream up, blessed with climbing-falling chord progressions and that signature wave of melancholia washing over it all. Sometimes Healy gets a little too close to the old days, like on the banjo-plucking “Holiday” (it even does the four count intro on the drum sticks that appeared in every other song on The Man Who), but between the hypnotic “Shadow Boxing” and the hilarious, “Flight of the Conchords”-esque “Robot,” Wreckorder shows that Healy still has much to offer while not forgetting where he came from. Good to see you again, Fran. (Rykodisc 2010)
On the day after Christmas in 1986, mid-way through my junior year of high school, my family moved from North Carolina to central Pennsylvania, beginning a period of upheaval and ill will between me and my parents and siblings that took several years to address and heal. Music was my refuge, the thing that kept me on an even keel when all I wanted to do was either put my fist through something hard, or slip down into the fetal position and cry. What I really needed was some flat-out rock and roll, performed by a band that could play bee-you-tiff-lee or durrrrty, depending on what was called for.