Hamish Hawk, eponymously named after their frontman, opened for their fellow Scottish band. This was a new band to me, and judging by the initial muted engagement of the wider audience, I was not alone in the novelty. Despite this, I was impressed with their act, featuring songs from the albums Heavy Elevator and A Firmer Hand. Musically, the influences of Franz Ferdinand, Morrisey and XTC are apparent in their songs. A direct reference to the song “Common People” further demonstrates an evident influence by Sheffield’s own Jarvis Cocker. With these influences, a group could easily fall into the ever-growing list of indistinguishable Indie Bands. However, their music did have its own identity. Their lyrics are abundant in vivid imagery, as well as references to historical figures and events, although this sometimes was pretty odd, “The Mauritian Badminton Doubles Champion, 1973” is the title of one of their biggest numbers. Hawk made a joke about this before introducing the song. The singer did bring comic elements to his performance, particularly using humour to try and advertise their merchandise and upcoming tour. He ran the risk of over-flogging at times, but just about managed to avoid it. It cannot really be blamed, with the financial pressures smaller bands and artists are under.
I had seen Travis a few months before, at an album promo show in London, where they were preparing for their upcoming tour Raze the Bar; they were fresh off the back of a summer spent supporting The Killers. Since then, they’ve toured South America and were now well into their European tour, which would be continuing on to North America into the new year.
Fran Healy suits a very bright, dyed neon-orange spiky hairstyle. Perhaps this eccentricity emits energy, as the band showed absolutely no signs of fatigue in their performance at the Octagon. At their promo gig earlier in the year, which was partially used to test-run certain songs before their main tour, Healy apologised for any mistakes that they would look to “iron out” for their main tour. Now at the Octagon, opening with “Bus” from their new album, Healy looked unsettled throughout the performance. Immediately after, he said he was “discombobulated” having had to change minutes beforehand and remove the creases from a new pair of trousers, joking he had to take the decision after an unfortunate rip in his clothing. In his haste, his pack and ear monitor weren’t properly connected. Seeing him in the summer, I’m sure he’d imagined it would be the mistakes that would have been ironed out – rather than literally ironing trousers, which resulted in a slightly flawed opening number. The beauty of live music is that we get to experience blips, improvisations and a unique sound.
“Driftwood” would be performed next. The emotion that Healy can still convey in his voice after over thirty years of the band is remarkable, the song is rich in imagery and has a running motif of change and transition. The remainder of the set would have plenty of variation. Healy speaks later about how Travis have been branded as quite a mellow and somewhat depressing band – “the Why does it always rain on me? band”. This is not the case in his eyes, with their songs spanning a variety of emotions, not just sadness – there are songs of joy, hope, excitement and love, but also of anger and frustration, saying there would be three songs in the set of the “F*** you” variety, mainly about past relationships. In the case of “Re-offender”, however, it is about family, deeply personal to Healy, focused on his mother who was abused by his father. Travis’s music is massively influenced by Fran Healy’s life experiences, often explaining a song’s influence prior to playing; this personal attachment elevates the emotional impetus of their songs, which does transpire live.
Closing the set, the band played an acoustic “Flowers in the Window”, the instrumentally stripped-back song resulting in an emotive rendition as they started to close what had been a strong performance, despite minor blips. Finally, finishing with “Why Does It Always Rain On Me?” with Healy involving the crowd one last time to “pogo” to one of their most popular hits. The band closed and wished everyone a Merry Christmas as the jubilant crowd poured out of the Octagon, straight into a sheet of rain – perhaps I should have seen Electric Light Orchestra instead.
