#478 The Best Album of 2001, Round 1 Match #45: The Shins vs. Travis
Hey folks!
Today’s Best Album of 2001 match is:
#10 The Shins, OH, INVERTED WORLD
vs.
#119 Travis, THE INVISIBLE BAND
To vote, follow this link to the Google Form. You will need a Google login to vote. If you can’t or won’t have one, let me know ASAP (either through this newsletter, my email [kentmbeeson@hey.com] or on the Best Album Brackets Bluesky account) and I’ll see what I can do.
We have one… piece of writing today. Every so often, an album comes along that annoys a voter to such a degree that they are compelled to write the opposite of a Designated Cheerleader. Ladies and gentlemen, and everyone in-between and outside of that binary, I present to you: the Designated Jeerleader. This one is for THE INVISIBLE BAND, and it is from @sharkastic.bsky.social. Sharkastic, the floor is yours.
Some pieces of music are objectively better than others. Some works are innovative and challenging; others are derivative unimaginative lowest common denominator pub rock slop and The Invisible Band by Travis is undeniably in the latter category.
That's not to say that there's anything wrong in you personally liking and enjoying an album that's objectively dreadful, nor that it is compulsory to enjoy a work that is objectively excellent. Do I enjoy Beethoven? Not much, but that doesn't mean I would argue that he wasn't any good. (The composer, that is. Beethoven the movie makes me laugh like a drain).
I will, however, mentally pigeonhole you as someone whose ears are purely decorative, perhaps one serving any function if you need something to balance your glasses on, if you like this Travis album.
For professional reasons, I was unfortunate though to be made to suffer the whining drivel of Travis many more times than I would have liked during the early 2000s, and so I can inform you this isn't even the album with the lyrical "masterpiece" Turn (sample lyrics: "turn turn turn") and the annoying, but still miserable, hit Why Does It Always Rain on Me? (It's not rain, Travis; it's god's piss), where, like the antichrists they are, they turned water into whines.
This is the even more insipid follow up. The song writing is just as uninspired on, for example, Sing (sample lyrics: "sing, sing, sing"), basically the same song as Turn, running 25% faster; Side (sample lyrics: "side, side, side") and the appropriately named Safe (sample lyrics : "safe, so safe, so safe"). There is not a single redeeming moment on the entire album; the only admirable quality is the consistency.
If you go into any charity shop, you'll find several copies, maybe up to a dozen, of this album clogging up the shelves, musical landfill that pollutes the environment.
The greatest crime Britpop ever perpetuated was to encourage the emergence of Travis and their fellow travellers Keane and Coldplay, a hoard of utterly joyless Bedwetters (TM Alan McGee); The band, ironically, got signed on the basis of a song "All I want to Do is Rock", which is possibly the most transparent falsehood in musical history.
You might argue that the album is entirely inoffensive, but to be so utterly devoid of anything that might provoke any emotion, so lacking in passion, is the worst crime of all; driving down the middle of the road as a mortal hazard to oncoming traffic; lumpen and perfunctory, banal and predictable, it makes the average piece of elevator music seem vital and exciting.
I implore you to have it devoured by a pacman.
Sharkastic… thank you.
Click here to see the current results for the entire tournament, and click here to see the current results for the prediction bracket contest.
Yesterday, #39 Guided By Voices, ISOLATION DRILLS defeated #90 They Might Be Giants, MINK CAR, 122-60.
Thanks,
Kent
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