LONDON, ENGLAND - DECEMBER 07: Fran Healy of Travis performs during the The World's Big Sleep Out ... [+]
Over the course of about 25 years, Scottish alternative rock act Travis has sold millions of albums worldwide with nary a lineup change.
While the ten tracks that make up the group’s latest studio album were written prior to pandemic, the onset of COVID-19 nevertheless impacted proceedings in the run up to release.
The last vocal on the new album 10 Songs, now available via BMG, was recorded on March 13, as America began to more seriously approach the idea of quarantine, and the quartet utilized technology like FaceTime to complete the process of mixing and mastering their record.
Early shelter-in-place also impacted the group’s ability to make videos and properly promote their ninth studio album.
Following time in Berlin, Travis singer, songwriter and guitarist Fran Healy moved to Los Angeles, where he’s lived for about three years. There, pandemic forced him to take a more hands on approach to the new album’s visuals.
“The songs were all written. That was done. The pandemic has nothing on the songs. That was all done in a COVID-free zone. What you see though, all of the artwork, was done during COVID,” explained Healy from London via Skype earlier this month. “I was looking at Matisse and looking at sort of his blue paintings - his paper cutouts. I thought I’d do something like that - use graphic things,” said the frontman. “Then there was this idea of songs being like badges. I thought, ‘Maybe we’ll change them into badges and put them on a jacket - make the badges, hire a camera and take the picture.’ But when you look at the album cover, that’s my picture. I took that photograph on the steps near the studio running around trying to find somewhere that had good light.”
'10 Songs,' the ninth studio album from Scottish alternative rockers Travis, is now available via ... [+]
Following work on the album’s cover art, Healy, a film buff and graduate of the Glasgow School of Art, took on an even bigger role when it came to filming videos in support of 10 Songs, directing the video for “The Only Thing.”
He took everything a step further when it came to making the video for the single “A Ghost,” drawing his own storyboards and ultimately creating the video using an iPad, animating via the rotoscoping which defines the classic 1985 video to a-ha’s “Take on Me.”
“‘A Ghost’ was the last song that was written for the album. It was written at the end of December. We tried to record it in December but it didn’t happen. So we recorded at the beginning of March,” said Healy. “While we were recording it, I was trying to think of visuals for it. I had a visual of me in an alleyway in L.A. playing with the guys dressed up as ghosts. That was the picture. So that was a starting point,” he continued, outlining the early idea for the new video. “But when I got back and lockdown happened, I couldn’t film it. Because no one was working. I was like, ‘What do I do? I guess maybe I just take my storyboards that I’ve drawn and draw more of them.’”
When everything was said and done, Healy had drawn 2,500 storyboards, working over 15 hours a day for nearly a month to animate the new video. Unable to find a full crew, and without the ability to film it with his bandmates, Healy finished the new video with his 14-year-old son, who not only portrays the video’s ghosts but filmed its closing live action shots with a drone.
It’s a video rife with pop culture references for the watchful eye, nodding in the direction of films like It’s A Wonderful Life and Blade Runner while briefly parodying the famous 1942 Edward Hopper painting Nighthawks.
“The Nighthawks thing was because Los Angeles was in lockdown. You go out in the car and, literally, in L.A., one of the busiest driving cities in the world - no cars. It was like a ghost town. It was like driving through a three-dimensional Edward Hopper painting,” said Healy. “So this was going on in my head. The idea of this video - and me walking through this place where the only people there were these three ghosts who kind of follow me around. I thought, ‘Oh, I’ll put Nighthawks in as a tip of the cap.’”
In an era when MTV no longer plays music videos on music television, the short has become something of a lost art. But Travis’s “A Ghost” video is a wonderful example of the way music and images can combine to drive narrative, bringing a great song to life by lending context, giving the music additional meaning and pushing everything forward.
While the song was written well before the pandemic, it nevertheless manages to address today’s world via lyrics like “It's easier to be alive / Than hide under your pillow / While your life is passing you by." Like so many songs seem to be doing today during often trying times, “A Ghost” has taken on new meaning.
“Joni Mitchell says songwriters are like the coal miner's canary. I’m talking songwriters - not people who write these jingles and things. Songwriters are the smoke alarm. They’ve got their ear to the track. They can hear the freight train coming from miles away before anyone else,” said Healy. “There is some weird stuff going on. Take ‘Waving in the window.’ I wrote that lyric two years ago,” he continued, noting the new album’s opening track, another which manages to address today’s world in eerily prescient fashion. “Now all of these photographs and videos and films and visual things during the pandemic show people sitting at the windows, waving at the window - everyone’s trapped behind a window. F—-ing hell. When I wrote that song, it was like, ‘What’s that about?’ I didn’t know! But I saw people waving at windows. I don’t know why I saw that. But that’s what I saw.”
“The Only Thing” is a pandemic pop masterpiece that features the wistful vocals of Bangles singer Susanna Hoffs over lyrics easily relatable to any record collecting fanatic. Its socially distanced video was directed by Healy using a trio of cellphones.
“The Bangles were right in that pocket where you’re the most absorbent you’ll ever be when you’re around about that age - 12, 13 or 14 as I was. The Bangles are in my DNA. Her voice… When I hear that voice, it’s like a time machine. It takes me back to a simpler time. It calms me,” said Healy of his collaboration with Hoffs. “She just has that magical, cool something about her. Any songwriter has an idea of how something sounds in their head before they execute it. But when we eventually had recorded and mixed that track, and put on the strings and made it into the song that it is - oh my god it was way bigger than I had thought. And when I hear it, it makes me smile.”
For Healy, living in the United States has had a profound impact on the songwriter.
As he looks around, in the run up to the 2020 election, Healy’s clear on what he observes in a media landscape often driven by social media.
MEXICO CITY, MEXICO - NOVEMBER 16: Dougie Payne, Francis Healy and Andy Dunlop of Travis performs ... [+]
“When I was a kid, I viewed America - you were the castle on the hill,” said the singer with reverence, citing early exposure to American pop culture as a formative experience. “Here’s the difference - and it’s very, very simple: in America, 95% of everything that is going on - whether it’s social media or anything that is public - it’s all about profit. It’s all about making money. Looking around now, there’s so much unhappiness. It’s all because of greed. And now it’s out of control,” Healy said. “I’m still hopeful. But I feel like the only way it can be healed is if everyone just stops going on social f—-ing media. Get off of it. Go and vote. And exercise your right.”
Ever the optimist, Healy has a simple word of general advice for people during turbulent times.
“I made a documentary about my band. It’s called Almost Fashionable. It’s funny and it’s good. I brought a journalist who doesn’t like us on tour with us. I wanted to understand what it was that was wrong with us - what he thought,” explained Healy of the film’s premise. “In the end, it turns out it’s optics. It’s just a lens issue. Because what is there not to like?” asked the singer rhetorically with a laugh. “But one of the things that came out of that was this word ‘nice.’ We’re Scottish. That’s in our unwritten constitution. You’ve got to be nice. Just be a nice person,” Healy said. “So, in this time that we’re living in, right now, that would be my message to everybody: Just. Be. Nice.”
