The thing with live gigs is they shuffle the songs chosen into such nonsensical bloody orders. Which is probably as it should be, nothing wrong there you say. But put this whopping-large Alexandra Palace show from last Christmas back in a chronological order it would be like watching the unveiling of some big-budget musical interpretation of a great Shakespearean tragedy adapted for modern times. And just that touch more entertaining.
See, Travis were the men who were worth getting to know, back in the day. The kind of band that contently nessled at the bottom of your top ten favourite indie band lists, safe in the knowledge of their relative immunity from relegation. But then they stopped playing the ball and just let it roll. Seeing them live into the latter half though still bore the honest intensity of earlier moments as a soft reminder of the men who were worth getting to know.
This DVD, for instance, is almost worth owning solely for Andy’s ferociously careless shorting-crackle of a solo in an otherwise straighter-than-it-used-to-be ‘All I Wanna Do Is Rock’. To see him play guitar with such abandon is a real joy in any situation, but especially on ‘Writing To Reach You’, ‘The Humpty Dumpty Love Song’ and ‘As You Are’. Even through the more desperately unconvincing ‘Mid Life Krysis’ and dire ‘Sing’ he’s off playing lead in The Who’s rock opera Tommy, while the rest of the band drift off on a pedalo of indifference. Sadly, as a whole, it seems they’re now beyond the point of being able to rely on visions from the past as a sweetener.
Spend your time playing this in that more logical order and you’ll see a dark cloud descend over them sometime after ‘Turn’ and definitely before lesser brother ‘Side’, Fran Healy’s metamorphosis from lovable bumbling open-hearted simpleton to pop star with an artificial conscience and Dougie Paine’s tumble into camp smugness. The songs before that point inevitably suffer from the company they keep too. It’s frankly just too lightweight an experience. And the problem with looking at things this way around is that there’s consequently no big finale. But their own choice was only a predictably wet version of ‘Why Does It Always Rain On Me’. Even interactivity can’t come to the rescue here. Whatever happened to ‘Happy’?
There is a full documentary bundled in as an extra, on top of the 21 live tracks, charting their day at Ally Pally in softly-directed detail, which will keep those still interested at least content. The most recent songs have maybe hinted at a surviving ambition, but the attitude is still missing in action. And this DVD pays heed to that in widescreen.