Quite Free does it for me too. I think its one of the most addictive .As has been said , its summery and driving along the road material , with emotion - and 'WHAT' emotion ! The high note make it so real and believable . Fran puts everything in to his songs and gets in to your soul.
I think Friends and Quite Free would be excellent singles.
or I just find really bland. J.Smith is a case in point. There's just nothing to it. Verse, big choir, ooohhhaaahhhaaahhooohhhhaaahhhhoooohhh bit, end.
I hope you dont mind me saying this but the main point of J.Smith is the wooahhahoohaoo. I appreciate you may not like it though as its each to his/her own but it creates the atmosphere in the song and is skilfully put together and creates its objective of being dramatic spooky , dark and deathly
I really posted some crap in this thread earlier. Because I suppose
1. I was in a strange mood
2. The leak/rips gave a slightly false impression.
In a nutshell I gave it 3/5 and said it was really hit and miss. Bad me.
There's nothing more powerful in assessing a new album that actually walking into a shop, buying it, unwrapping it, reading the sleeve then sitting and playing it. And on that score Ode has just gone up a lot in my estimations.
Chinese Blues has more punch every time I hear it. Love the tune, adore the lyrics. All seems to be perfectly timed/spaced, pitched just right all the way through. Writing To Reach You is the only album opener that comes close to it. Quicksand? pah. 3 Times? Haha. Tip top. It sounds like a cliche but J.Smith really, REALLY makes sense in context. I admire it more than LOVE it, but it fits really nicely. Something Anything I really, really can't decide on. Loud, energetic, catchy, but strangely soulless I reckon. Strange.
Long Way Down is growing on me, seems to sound a bit better every time I listen. Lyrically it's pretty good, more than I gave it credit for. Broken Mirror just keeps growing and growing. At work today it was stuck in my head, and after hearing it first time and thinking it was a tuneless dirge, that's real progress. If Something Anything feels a bit empty Broken Mirror is the opposite - brilliantly subtle and atmospheric.
But it's at this point 'Ode' stops being a slightly patchy, bold album and starts being BRILLIANT. Last Words is classic infectious, happy, bouncy slightly country/folk Travis circa The Invisible Band, love the Banjo. Great potential single and easily Dougie's best effort to date.
Quite Free, I quite liked to start with. Not as immediate as Last Words, a bit more depth. Second listen - better. By the fifth or sixth listen it's changed from being a good, solid song to an absolute all-time classic and moster hit in waiting, awesome.
I'm gonna pretend Get Up doesn't exist because I can't stand it.
Friends - the kind of quirky, catchy, curve-ball Travis occasionally throw us that sounds little like most of their stuff but still has the magic sprinkle-dust only Travis seem to have access to poured over it to make it something that's really fun to listen to and potentially a big radio hit. See also: Sing, Flowers In The Window.
Song To Self we know about, awesome.
And then finally to close the album, my favourite Travis song of all time, the one that really brings out genuine emotion above & beyond 'ooh I like this'. Before You Were Young = perfection.
a 4/5 very closely bordering on a 5. Fantastic work.
Maybe there will come a day when Before You Were Young doesn't shock me and shake me and amaze me and inspire me, but on the fourth listen it sounds better than ever.
Also Song To Self is sounding as good as any song I've ever heard, and Long Way Down has redeemed itself with the awesome ending!
Although I thought the album didn't sound 'classic' at first, I now think it has a certain TMWish cohesion across every song and it sounds brilliant!
Mikko85. I really agree with what you wrote there. From Last Words onwards, it's truly amazing (apart from Get Up. I so wish Used To Belong was there instead). It's not as high as The Man Who or The Invisible Band for me but it's certainly becoming my 3rd favourite after a shaky start. After Song To Self I think Last Words is a must be single. Though I love Quite Free more (up there as one of my very favourite Travis songs), Last Words is a great single.
Don't want to really start discussing the next album but I'll say this: More songs like the second half of the album (minus Get Up, plus Chinese Blues) and maybe with an album of songs like that, The Invisible Band might not be my favourite Travis album for much longer. :)
Don't want to really start discussing the next album but I'll say this: More songs like the second half of the album (minus Get Up, plus Chinese Blues) and maybe with an album of songs like that, The Invisible Band might not be my favourite Travis album for much longer. :)
I'm not sure why, but Ode does feel like it could be the raw first attempt before the utterly brilliant second one (think GF and TMW again), but there's going to have to be some seriously good songwriting for that to happen.
Don't want to really start discussing the next album but I'll say this: More songs like the second half of the album (minus Get Up, plus Chinese Blues) and maybe with an album of songs like that, The Invisible Band might not be my favourite Travis album for much longer. :)
I'm not sure why, but Ode does feel like it could be the raw first attempt before the utterly brilliant second one (think GF and TMW again), but there's going to have to be some seriously good songwriting for that to happen.
I agree with that. I think the recording of the album and the production etc, is perfect. The songs, unlike on TBWNN, are as good as they can be. I just hope they maybe take a little longer over the writing of the next album. Instead of 5 weeks writing, 2 weeks recording, mix songs, album done... How about 5 weeks writing, 2 weeks recording, mix songs, 5 weeks writing, 2 weeks recording, mix songs. I just feel that a little extra writing time and this could have been that album because its very close. :)
On hearing the first three tracks, I thought that finally the original band I loved are back!! Travis rock, all they ever wanted to do was rock and the boys I first saw in a club in 1997 were once again blasting out of the stereo.
This, followed by the performances of the songs this weekend on the UK tour alongside the stronger rock songs from previous albums show the band back doing what they do best. Perhaps it's age, perhaps it's acceptance, maybe it's even the fact that there is no longer a record company influence, but boy it's so great to hear them rock out and not have another song which is as aptly titled as 'Safe' is.
(and yes I am a HUGE Travis fan, so please don't take this the wrong way)
Great reviews guys!
I really wanted to read what you had to say Ben, because we have pretty much the same taste in songs from TBWNN, so maybe it'll be the same here with Ode.
Ok I've listened to Ode a few times now. I like it. I can't say it's absolutely amazing - it still doesn't touch The Man Who and Invisible Band for me, although maybe such different albums shouldn't be compared anyway - but it's a much more interesting piece of work than their last. Sure it's a rocky album, but I think people tend to big it up as being rockier than it really is. Many tracks aren't complete rock-out songs, but they are edgier and rawer. I still wouldn't hesitate to say Good Feeling is their rockiest album - it has a certain 'young' energy that perhaps can never really be replicated.
To pick a few of my favourite songs out: Chinese Blues sounds good, although I think I need to listen to it a few more times. Nice melody and ambience to it. I think Last Words has one of my favourite Travis guitar solo's; that riff is awesome! I kinda wish there was a cool riff in the actual chorus as well - I like songs that have a musical hook of some sort backing the vocals in the chorus, like Keane's Spiralling for example. In fact I'd have liked the album to have more epic Layla or Sweet Child Of Mine style guitars, but never mind. :P Quite Free, well, lets just say its a good job that This Love is a Travis song or they could so get done for plagiarism lol. Great feel to this song; it epitomises the type of Travis songs I like best. And I still think J. Smith and Get Up are great, although I've heard them so many times that I find myself wanting to skip the tracks so as not to get too bored of 'em. This is why I don't like listening to bits of an album before it's released...
My opinion is bound to change on a day-to-day basis 'cos it always does. But I like what I'm hearing at the moment. I think Travis ought to churn out another two or three singles after Song To Self to get people to notice them. Surely one of the songs has got to do it for them.
Great reviews guys!
I really wanted to read what you had to say Ben, because we have pretty much the same taste in songs from TBWNN, so maybe it'll be the same here with Ode.
Edit: Although I don't like Used To Belong :oP
Haha. Yes, I remember! :) You really should like Used To Belong though. ;)
