Boards
Travis Morrison - Travistan
I don't know if you've got anyone lined up to write this review, but I thought I'd write one myself. I'd appreciate any feedback since I'd definitely be interested in writing for the site:
The middle of the road isn't necessarily the safest place to be. It's hard to believe that the composer of this album was writing songs like I Love A Magician only two albums ago. The majority of the people who know of The Dismemberment Plan's back-catalogue will agree that Emergency & I was probably the band's musical peak. The progression from Emergency to Change was a shock to some yet still stood up as a powerful sign of a band reaching a musical maturity with pure strength in songs like Time Bomb or Secret Curse that compensated for the lack of their more frenzied, experimental sound.
The sad thing about Travistan is that the lessons learned from Change were the wrong ones. The artistic release of being uncompromisingly in control of his own music combined with Travis's want to distinguish himself as independent of past achievements results in a mess of an album that seems to contain only one consistent thread, which unfortunately is blandness.
Travis has strived to define his own sound, bringing in half of Deathcab For Cutie to help create this album but by including songs intended for The Dismemberment Plan's next release (Change, Born In '72), the break was always going to be messy and the album was always going to lack focus. The juxtaposition of hip-hop, rock and pop that The Dismemberment Plan had once mastered now seems uneven with far too much weight given to pop and half-hearted hip-hop. It's hard to get caught up in an album that sits sickly sweet ballads like Angry Angel and Che Guevara Poster alongside songs with lyrics like "Moses comes down from the mountain and he's pissed; Steps right up to the red sea and he flicks his wrists; He says "y'all coulda built a boat, if anybody had the guts; While I was up there talking to plants and growing my beard to my nuts".
When you've been a part of a band with such critical acclaim as The Dismemberment Plan once had, it's going to take a lot to convince people that the group's disbanding was a positive. Songs like The Word Cop and the bonus track Represent show that this album is not a complete disaster. If anyone else had created this album, I may even have quite liked it but when you've got songs like Do The Standing Still and 8 1/2 Minutes in your back-catalogue, you've got no-one else to blame but yourself. You can't accuse Travis of releasing an album that's been written for the sake of the fan base, but the passion that once held so much appeal in his vocal deliveries now sound patronising and detached.
After leaving Chisel, Ted Leo released a disgusting album in the form of tej leo (?) / Rx pharmacists that threatened to destroy the untouchable reputation he had once built. Critical reaction was harsh and the experiment threatened to sink Ted. With hindsight, it turned out that the album was an a self-indulgent release for all the sides of Ted he felt he couldn't express in the compromise of a band. This wasn't the direction that Ted was striving towards but merely a natural human reflex of wanting to do whatever you're told not to. Since that glitch, Ted has released two jaw-dropping albums that built on the strengths of the past with the interim album serving as a lesson well learned. Travistan may not sound anything like tej, yet the optimist in me hopes that this sub-par collection merely serves as a release of all suppressed emotions with greater things to come.
The middle of the road isn't necessarily the safest place to be. It's hard to believe that the composer of this album was writing songs like I Love A Magician only two albums ago. The majority of the people who know of The Dismemberment Plan's back-catalogue will agree that Emergency & I was probably the band's musical peak. The progression from Emergency to Change was a shock to some yet still stood up as a powerful sign of a band reaching a musical maturity with pure strength in songs like Time Bomb or Secret Curse that compensated for the lack of their more frenzied, experimental sound.
The sad thing about Travistan is that the lessons learned from Change were the wrong ones. The artistic release of being uncompromisingly in control of his own music combined with Travis's want to distinguish himself as independent of past achievements results in a mess of an album that seems to contain only one consistent thread, which unfortunately is blandness.
Travis has strived to define his own sound, bringing in half of Deathcab For Cutie to help create this album but by including songs intended for The Dismemberment Plan's next release (Change, Born In '72), the break was always going to be messy and the album was always going to lack focus. The juxtaposition of hip-hop, rock and pop that The Dismemberment Plan had once mastered now seems uneven with far too much weight given to pop and half-hearted hip-hop. It's hard to get caught up in an album that sits sickly sweet ballads like Angry Angel and Che Guevara Poster alongside songs with lyrics like "Moses comes down from the mountain and he's pissed; Steps right up to the red sea and he flicks his wrists; He says "y'all coulda built a boat, if anybody had the guts; While I was up there talking to plants and growing my beard to my nuts".
When you've been a part of a band with such critical acclaim as The Dismemberment Plan once had, it's going to take a lot to convince people that the group's disbanding was a positive. Songs like The Word Cop and the bonus track Represent show that this album is not a complete disaster. If anyone else had created this album, I may even have quite liked it but when you've got songs like Do The Standing Still and 8 1/2 Minutes in your back-catalogue, you've got no-one else to blame but yourself. You can't accuse Travis of releasing an album that's been written for the sake of the fan base, but the passion that once held so much appeal in his vocal deliveries now sound patronising and detached.
After leaving Chisel, Ted Leo released a disgusting album in the form of tej leo (?) / Rx pharmacists that threatened to destroy the untouchable reputation he had once built. Critical reaction was harsh and the experiment threatened to sink Ted. With hindsight, it turned out that the album was an a self-indulgent release for all the sides of Ted he felt he couldn't express in the compromise of a band. This wasn't the direction that Ted was striving towards but merely a natural human reflex of wanting to do whatever you're told not to. Since that glitch, Ted has released two jaw-dropping albums that built on the strengths of the past with the interim album serving as a lesson well learned. Travistan may not sound anything like tej, yet the optimist in me hopes that this sub-par collection merely serves as a release of all suppressed emotions with greater things to come.