On August 13th, the first-ever vinyl reissue of UK Top Five album 12 Memories from Travis continues the reissue streak from the Scottish rock band. Cut at London’s Metropolis Studios, the pressing features all original packaging replication including photography by Anton Corbijn. Available for pre-order today, the album will be released on standard black vinyl, with a limited white pressing available exclusively at Travis’ official UK store. Meanwhile in the US, Newbury Comics will offer an exclusive Black Ice edition.
None other than Sir Elton John raved that 12 Memories would “take you on a real journey… like The Beatles’ Revolver”. And, just like The Beatles in 1966, Travis were at a critical juncture when it came time to record their fourth album and the follow up to the multi-Platinum international breakthrough The Invisible Band.
Coldplay had launched a career patterned on Travis’ The Man Who-era song writing, while frontman Fran Healy was secretly battling depression. With the Iraq War newly raging in the background, the group began to look outwards in their song writing, penning socially conscious singles like “Re-Offender,” which dealt with domestic abuse, and “The Beautiful Occupation,” which was inspired by the US invasion of Iraq. If “Love Will Come Through” was more like the Travis of old, it was filtered through a darkness that defined much of 12 Memories, with the album as a whole taking on tinges of electronica, and the band rocking with a harder edge than before.
Fran Healy comments “12 Memories was an album from a dark passage in our timeline. Neil was recovering from his near death swimming pool accident, the UK and US were about to go to war in Iraq, and I was feeling burnt out by the volume of work which the past two records had generated. This was a reaction to all this. It alienated many fair weather fans, and made many hardcore fans happy. It was also a big part of Neil’s physio. What resulted was an overall darker affair.”
12 Memories is the third vinyl reissue from Travis so far in 2021. It follows 2007’s The Boy With No Name (re-released May 28th), and the first-ever vinyl release for debut album, Good Feeling (April 2nd). To celebrate the reissues, the band are remastering their seminal promotional videos in HD—check them out here.
