The Bickle Hand Of Fate

It’s the most organic record we’ve ever made. It’s strong but gentle and it feels good. It’s definitely my favourite album.”

Travis bassist Dougie Payne just can’t hide his enthusiasm for his band’s fourth long player, 12 Memories – their first new music in over two years. You can’t blame him really. For a while last year it looked like the end of the road for the massively successful Glasgow outfit who’d hit paydirt with singles like ‘Why Does It Always Rain On Me’ and ‘Driftwood’ from their breakthrough album, The Man Who. Constant touring in the wake of that album’s success had left the band exhausted and cracks began to appear in their relationship during the making of the follow-up, The Invisible Band. Then last year, drummer Neil Primrose jumped into a shallow swimming pool in France breaking three bones in his neck.
“The doctors thought he wouldn’t walk again,” Payne recalls. “We were pretty devastated about it, there’s just no way we’d carry on without any member of the band.”
Against the odds, Primrose pulled through and the band reconvened late last year in a converted farmhouse overlooking the Mull of Kintyre.
“We went there purely to see if we still liked each other,” Payne explains. Our relationship had fragmented over the previous year or two and we had begun to associate each other not with music but with work and the grind of touring. Previously it had been about fun, making music and being friends – all the good stuff.”
Taking the precaution of bringing along some recording equipment and an engineer – in case anything emerged in the songwriting department – they soon got down to some serious graft.
“Amazingly, we found it worked,” he says. “We remembered why we were in a band in the first place. The break had done us a power of good. To be honest we were sick of each other and people were sick of the sight of us. After spending six months off we had learned to become human again, doing things like going to the supermarket, to the cinema, reading books and spending time with wives and girlfriends.
“We recorded all this stuff in the first month, we took Christmas off and went back in January this year and did the same again. By March we had the bulk of the album done. Producing yourselves is a bit like letting the children into the sweet-shop but there was no pressure from the record company and we had totally free reign. We’ve always managed to cut away the fat anyway.”
In some respects 12 Memories is radically different to their previous outings and fans might not readily recognise the new material as classic Travis. Songs like recent single ‘Re-Offender’, ‘Mid-Life Krysis’ and the U2 sounding ‘Quicksand’ portray a band growing and maturing.
“We’ve definitely moved away from the ‘la la la’ songs,” Payne reflects. “We’re men now. Neil’s accident was kind of a rite of passage for us. Before that we were boys. Even though we’ve been together for 13 years there is nothing that can prepare you or equip you to deal with success except success. Either it will make you fall apart or bring you closer together. You can’t wish it to happen differently or not to happen at all. It just happens. It’s been a massive learning experience for us. We’ve come through the other side and we’re ready to do it again.”
Meanwhile, for the first time in almost two years Travis will be taking to the road again for some live shows in support of the album.
“We’re doing a bit of touring for the rest of the year and a big tour next year. We’re mentally equipped to do it again. The people who book the tour for us are well aware of how it fucks us up so we won’t be overstretching ourselves.
“This is a lovely time for us right now. We have the record and no-one else has heard it. Listening to your own record before it’s released is a bit like being caught wanking but once it’s out there you have to let it go.”

12 Memories is out now on Independiente