Travis is back at it again after soothing their fans last year with a Boy Who Had No Name, an album witten about lead vocalist Fran Healy's newborn son. Now that they're back on track after a 4 year lull prior to 2007. Their first single will be "Something Anything" off of their own and newly established Red Telephone Box label. Even more exhillarating is that their sixth album, Ode To J. Smith, will be bouncing off the walls one month from now (September 29th).
The Ode To J. Smith tracklisting will be:
01: Chinese Blues
02: J. Smith
03: Something Anything
04: Long Way Down
05: Broken Mirror
06: Last Words
07: Quite Free
08: Get Up
09: Friends
10: Song To Self
11: Before You Were Young
Healy and Co. added that this will be their edgiest album yet, and they may just be right judging from the video below. Their first single from the album, "Something Anything" features our guitar pal (Andy Dunlop), perplexed as he stares at his trusty guitar, only to soon grow 10+ feet tall and wail on the best guitar solo I've heard from Travis to date. Who knew they were capable of such raw guitarwork?
Healy added comments about the album name in a mixblog:
"The album is called Ode to J. Smith partly giving a heads up to the key song and partly because all the songs are written about nameless characters or to nameless characters."MP3: Travis - Big Chair (buy)
Official - http://www.travisonline.com/
MySpace - http://www.myspace.com/travis
Video: Travis - Something Anything
We know everyone can't help but read every piece of recycled news about Coldplay, but we guarantee we have something you haven't heard yet... unless you somehow know as much as we do.
But first, take a quick gander at the songs below. If you've been following all of the song selection hoopla since November/December, its a relief that Coldplay finally selected their tracklist for Viva La Vida. A few songs that I've seen brought up time and time again from the band's long-running blog are "Cemetaries of London", "Lost" and "42" and "Violet Hill". You can expect these to be the strong tracks on VLV.
There's no way of telling how many songs Coldplay did actually scratch from this list, but the band wanted to keep it to-the-point. Here are a few quotes from Coldplay's official site from the course of the last 6-8 months I found would shed some more light as to what we can expect:
The plan has always been to make a short record. No more than 42 minutes, 9 songs (give or take).
To use a tired analogy, it’s like picking a football team. It’s not simply about individual talent, but overall cohesion and combined effectiveness. The bigger picture. An album that you can listen to from start to finish. The danger of this is that great songs may get left off the album because they don’t “fit”.
One minute we're all buzzing about the mix of Prospekt's March; the next we're crippled by doubt over the drum track for Lost!
It feels like a very dense record. There are so many melodies and colours packed into a relatively short space (42 mins). As you'd expect with Brian Eno, there's experimentation, and exploration. But the music still has integrity. It's real and honest. There's no posturing or bombast.From their latest message posted on April 10th, we can expect to hear one or two of their new tracks soon:
The powers-that-be tell me it'll be available for general consumption on June 16/17, depending on where you live. We'll try to release a track or two before then...That's it, here's their tracklist:
1. Life in Technicolor
2. Cemeteries of London
3. Lost!
4. 42
5. Lovers in Japan/Reign of Love
6. Yes
7. Viva la Vida
8. Violet Hill
9. Strawberry Swing
10. Death and All His Friends
And finally... for those who didn't think we could introduce something new to you, here are two VERY good tracks you probably never knew about (unless you're crafty like us). The first is a song by Faultline featuring Chris Martin from their 2002 Your Love Means Everything album (also features a song with The Flaming Lips) and the second is from the God Put A Smile On Your Face EP (2003).
MP3: Coldplay - Your Love Means Everything, Part 2 (Faultline, feat. Chris Martin) (buy)
MP3: Coldplay - Animals (buy)
If you want to go back in time and see all of Coldplay insights on their new album, visit Wiki Coldplay. Or if you want to own everything Coldplay has to offer on iTunes go here.
And lastly, here's a video showing the lighter side of Chris Martin from 2006:
