L.A. Times

UKの国民的ロックバンド、トラヴィスが10作目となる最新アルバム『L.A. Times』をリリース!

ブリットアワードやアイヴァー・ノヴェロ賞など、輝かしい受賞歴のあるグラスゴー出身の巨匠たちが、10作目となるスタジオ・アルバム「L.A. Times」で帰ってきた。プロデューサーにはエール、ベック、フェニックスなど名だたるアーティストの作品を手掛けてきたトニー・ホッファーを起用。フラン・ヒーリーがここ10数年、自身の故郷と呼ぶほど時間を過ごしてきたロサンゼルスのスキッド・ロウの端で所有している自身のスタジオで本作は制作された。そして彼は「L.A. Times」はTravisにとって「The Man Who」以来最も私的なアルバムと説明している。

Fran Healy calls L.A. Times, the tenth studio album from Travis, the groups "most personal album since The Man Who," the 1999 record that found the Scottish guitar band establishing the parameters of their thoughtful indie rock. Healys comparison hinges upon emotion, not music. Travis arent attempting to revive the hunger and ambition that fueled them as young men, theyre testing the creative boundaries of middle age as they take stock of the state of a world in tumult. Healy wrote the songs for L.A. Times at the studio he has on the outskirts of Los Angeles Skid Row, then the band turned to producer Tony Hoffer -- a frequent collaborator with one of L.A.s bards, Beck -- to polish the tunes into an album that embraces the unknown and finds comfort in the familiar. Hoffer helps steer Travis toward production that feels modern, expanding the bands aural palette without abandoning their identity. When things get stripped back to not much more than a guitar and voice -- as it is on "Live It All Again" -- the groups art-rock lineage comes into focus, just like how the jaunty bounce of "Gaslight" suggests buried ties to Britpop. The remarkable thing about L.A. Times, though, is that the album as a whole feels quintessentially American, and Southern Californian at that: its a vibrant and lively intersection of styles and ideas, all heard through the prism of an expatriate who remains enamored and bewildered by his new home. Dig beneath the surface, and the lyrics make plain Healys claim of the album being a personal record, but the trick that Travis pull off with L.A. Times is that it is engaging on the surface thanks to colorful melodies and shifting arrangements -- the very things that beg for subsequent listens, the ones where themes reveal themselves. ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine