Until now, the Scottish band Travis may have been unknown in the U.S. -- as singer Fran Healy puts it, "In America, our first record was like a silent fart -- no one even smelled it" -- but, unpleasant metaphors aside, the boys have a couple of factors working in their favor. For one, Travis are the most popular rock act in the U.K. Their second album, The Man Who -- named for psychiatrist Oliver Sacks' book of unusual case studies, The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat -- has already sold 2 million copies in Europe.

And they've certainly got the whole timing thing down cold.

Take their appearance at last June's Glastonbury Festival in England. According to Healy, they'd just played the final chord of their breakthrough single, "Why Does It Always Rain on Me?" . . . when it started pouring. "Everybody was standing there going, 'You fuckers!'" Healy recalls. "We got the blame."

Since Glastonbury, The Man Who has remained in the U.K. Top Twenty. A collection of wistful folk-rock ballads, the album recalls the gentler side of Radiohead (thanks, most likely, to producer Nigel Godrich, who also produced OK Computer) minus the heavy themes and all-systems-crashing mix. Instead, on tracks like "Writing to Reach You" and "Driftwood," Healy's yearning vocals reflect on love lost. The guy is nothing if not achingly sincere, and this refreshing absence of pose is well matched by the music's unassailable melodic smarts. The Man Who has just been released in the U.S., and the band is currently touring this country with Oasis.

Healy, 26, was raised by his mother in working-class Glasgow. He asked for his first guitar at age thirteen after seeing Roy Orbison play "Oh, Pretty Woman" on television. But he also liked to paint, so he attempted art school -- ultimately dropping out to focus on Glass Onion, the band he joined (it featured future Travis guitarist Andy Dunlop and drummer Neil Primrose) on the day he enrolled.

Healy says the group jelled when he recruited longtime pal Dougie Payne, who had never played bass, to play bass. Glass Onion became Travis, and in 1996 the band -- always misfit nice guys in the hip Trainspotting-era Glasgow scene -- relocated to London. More good timing: A month later, record exec Andy Macdonald approached Healy at a pub. Healy thought he was being cruised until Macdonald informed the singer that he wanted to sign Travis to his new label.

Unfortunately, though well-received by critics, the band's 1997 debut, Good Feeling, didn't make much of an impact. And when The Man Who was released last May, the critics jumped ship, angry that Travis had dropped the lobotomized fun of early singles like "U16 Girls" for a mellower vibe.

On the plus side: The public clearly did not mind. And Healy says he'd grown accustomed to being excluded from the cool kids' table. "In Glasgow," Healy says, "it wasn't even like we were the outsiders. It was just like, 'Travis? They're fuckin' shite!' It wasn't the music. I think the people didn't like us. We were always dead-friendly and happy, and you can't be cool and be happy. You gotta be cool and be a miserable bastard."

So how much have Travis embraced the pop life? Well, the band has taken to covering Britney Spears' ". . . Baby One More Time" live -- albeit in a moody, Travis sort of way. Healy says the cover was originally meant as a parody, but he grew to appreciate the song on its own terms. "When I think of songs," Healy says, "I think of a big black sky, and this huge firework lights the whole sky up and explodes, and it leaves a tiny star in the blackness. And all the glitter fades away -- that's the band, the video, the TV, the marketing, the medium. And the little star is the song. And there's loads of these little stars all over the sky, and people use them to navigate their life: 'Oh, I was doing that back then.' At the end, bands, DJs, VJs, they all fade away. The song's the thing that stays forever."

MARK BINELLI
(April 21, 2000)