The Travelling Band – Under The Pavement

• 23rd Nov 2008

Alt country and folk, surely one of the finest musical genres that cross each other paths and work so successfully – simply ask the magnificent Band Of Horses on this matter.

The Travelling Band won best new talent at Glastonbury and certainly juxtapose themselves between those two genres. This is their debut album and rolls in with ten tales of all things laidback and melancholy.

Their sound is mellifluous whilst delivering little sparks and tinges of more than a few bright guitar chords in album opener ‘Only Waiting’. Don’t ask them to slaver you with a minor chord or an ounce of misery. It’s simply not in their vocabulary.

However it takes more than a luminous arrangement to really deliver, the album does labour and plod along and gives off a lack of passion. The similarity between them and Cosmic Rough Riders / Soul Asylum is at times scary. The forcedness of this album and the unwillingness to try and be more adventurous is a million miles away from simple pop songs that The Shins knock out without even trying.

I have to admit it really sludges along and i was really bored after about 6 tracks and no way could i stomach the whole 50 minutes of the album. However if you bookend ‘Only Waiting’ and ‘Sweet City’ then you have a decent double A side single. Only time will tell whether the great British fickle public will welcome these boys into their hearts. My feeling is that it isn’t gonna happen.