Five years is a long time to have been away and Travis return with a brand new album. Back in 2008 when they released 'Ode to J Smith' (the album only stayed on the charts for three weeks before sinking without a trace!) they sounded like they were on their last legs and a million miles away from the band who gained such success with 'The Man Who' back in 1999. The follow up to that successful album, 'The Invisible Band', aside from a couple of songs ('Sing', 'Side', and 'Flowers in the Window') already was charting their demise from public conciousness (despite it reaching #1 in the UK). '12 Memories' was a more edgy sound but only 'Re-Offender' of the three singles released from the album broke the Top Ten. It would be another four years until 'The Boy With No Name' appeared, and personally I think it's a much better album than the ones that followed 'The Man Who'. NME gave the album a mere 2 out of 10 and labelled it "impotent aural gruel" with "all the soul of a platform announcement".
And so a new album appears after another extended break and having only listened to it a couple of times I'm not convinced that they have made that much headway. Q Magazine in it's review (they gave it four stars) said, "The break has clearly done them good, here they sound determined to regain lost ground...Where You Stand finds the quartet catching up with themselves and displaying real depth and maturity." That maybe so but without a bunch of memorable songs they are not ever likely to enjoy the kind of success that they experienced in the light of 'The Man Who'.
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