TRAVIS After drummer's recovery, Scottish band gets groove back

The band considered disbanding, then it almost happened for the members.
KNIGHT RIDDER NEWSPAPERS
You could call it horrific case of "be careful what you wish for."
Speaking by phone during a wintry London night, bassist Dougie Payne explained why the timing of the accident that nearly led to the end of Scottish band Travis was so ironic.
"Just before it happened, we were nervously exhausted. We had done two albums back-to-back and numerous world tours behind those records for four years. We ended up feeling like we were living in a bubble, where there's this total unreality to everything.
"So we were pretty much done." And when that feeling sets in, "You can't help but think, 'Hmmm, I wonder what it'd be like to not be in a band. I wonder what I'd do."'
No sooner did Payne and the rest of Travis -- frontman Fran Healy, guitarist Andy Dunlop and drummer Neil Primrose -- start contemplating such a quiet future than they were confronted with it involuntarily when Primrose suffered three cracked vertebrae in a pool accident in which he nearly drowned.
Doctors weren't certain Primrose would walk again. Payne could only see it as a cruel twist of fate: "It was like someone going, 'Oh, really -- you don't want to be in a band? Well, here -- the band doesn't exist, ha ha."'
For a time, the quartet's future hung in the balance: "If Neil hadn't recovered," Payne says, "there just would have been no more Travis. That would have been it."
Luckily, Primrose made "an amazing recovery" and was back behind the kit within six months -- "and by then we were all champing at the bit to get back into music."
The result: "12 Memories," Travis' fourth album, a more somber, aggressive work than its dreamier predecessors, 1999's breakthrough "The Man Who" and 2001's soft-focus optimistic "The Invisible Band."
Payne describes it as inelegant. "But what it loses in elegance it makes up for in edge, maybe? A bit more bite? When we got back into the studio, we certainly felt liberated. We realized that it's more important to be human beings than one-quarter of a band, but we desperately wanted the band to continue.
"So there was this intense relief that we were playing together -- that we even could play together again. That doubled our enthusiasm for this."
Effect in concert
Consequently, this newfound intensity is coloring Travis' past music in concert. How much it has affected gentle tunes like "Why Does It Always Rain on Me?" and "Flowers in the Window" remains to be seen.
Yet, if the darker outlook of "12 Memories" is any indication, some of those breezy post-Britpop songs might not fit so well anymore. Not that Travis has started cranking up the feedback. The change is more noticeable in Healy's lyrical drive -- less rosy, more world-weary and uncertain.
This time, there are fewer cuts steeped in positivity, like the self-explanatory "Love Will Come Through." Instead, there is the sorrowful spousal-abuse piece "Re-Offender"; the sharp criticism of American media manipulation and will to power in "The Beautiful Occupation."
Payne attributes the change to a pair of closely linked factors: age and awareness.
"When you reach 30, your perception starts to shift, because you start looking outwardly more. You spend your teens and your 20s trying to work out who you are -- I'm into this or that band, I wear these clothes. Then, when you hit your late 20s or 30s, you kind of go, 'Where am I?' Over the past couple of years, our eyes have been opened up."
Staying challenged
At the very least it keeps Travis -- and the band's fans -- challenged. "And that's not a bad thing. It's interesting at this time to make a record that's a real grower, which I think this one is. That's not a fashionable thing to do, because right now everything has to be instant for people. I'm sure there are a lot of people who were into the last two records but are now saying, 'Ah, I'm not so into this one."'
That, of course, is to be expected; it has happened to all great bands that have dared to reinvent themselves in the name of creative survival.
"It's a matter of keeping it interesting for yourselves. If you can do that, then maybe the people who listen to you will stay interested as well."