James’ Shamelessly Nostalgic A-Z Of Albums That He Liked To Listen To When He Was Young – Part 13: The Man Who

The halfway point of the alphabet lies somewhere between ‘M’ and ‘N’.

Which is where we’ll be at the end of this post.

For we are on ‘M’ today.

I’m not sure if the fact that we’re almost halfway there is a source of comfort or distress really.

M is for The Man Who

Yesterday’s entry was an album by James, a band who inexplicably have a person’s name (and my name). And Travis are a band who have a person’s name too. Namely Travis. Whoever he is.

Maybe he’s The Man Who. Although in fact he isn’t.

Anyway, weird band name and weird album title aside, ‘The Man Who’ is an album that inspires mixed feelings to say the least. Travis’ first album, ‘Good Feeling’ was an altogether more raucous affair and it was exactly the kind of thing I liked.

This is more melancholic and, well ‘ballady’. And I didn’t love it when it first came out.

But then it grew on me and I did love it.

But I can’t help but feel it was the record that paved the way for the likes of Coldplay, Keane and Snow Patrol to dominate the guitar-based music scene in the early noughties. Britpop was already on its way out by the time Travis released this record. The Spice Girls and a resurgent post-Take That Robbie Williams seemed to be dominating the charts by the very late nineties and early noughties, and popular music was…well much poppier.

But there was still a place for indie bands and Travis were the band that was supposed to keep flying the flag.

So ‘The Man Who’ was maybe not the record we indie kids needed them to produce.

Still, it was immensely popular and they headlined the 2000 Glastonbury festival off the back of it.

Seriously, they headlined Glastonbury.

I was there.

It’s hard to imagine Travis being that big now, but they really were back then.

Indeed it’s something of a Travis-ty that Coldplay went on to be a much bigger band than Travis.

A year before they headlined Glastonbury, they made the news at the 1999 version of the same festival, after the weather, during what had been a previously dry weekend, turned somewhat wetter during their rendition of their biggest hit ‘Why does it always rain on me?’

I’m not sure if it happened again the following year.

I was there, but I was also drunk.

Anyway, it seems as good a song as any to play us out today.