After the massive bomb that was their boringly dreadful 2003 album 12 Memories (or as The Boneman once referred to it, a Travis-D) Fran Healy and company took their first extended hiatus ever as a band. 2007 marks a decade now since the band's inception and to celebrate Travis have released The Boy With No Name; an album that's nowhere near as bad as 12 Memories but doesn't even begin to live up to late 90's classics Good Feeling and The Man Who.

All in all, The Boy With No Name is actually more akin to Travis' third record The Invisible Band with its light sunshiny tone. First single "Closer" is romantic schmaltz done to perfection and even though "Selfish Jean" shamelessly rips off the drum beat to Iggy Pop's "Lust For Life," it's still one of the best and freshest sounding songs Travis have come up with since their heyday. Where Travis run into trouble on Boy With No Name though is in its tepid, limp and bloodless arrangements and once again Healy's penchant for writing flat out cringe inducing lyrics. Healy's earnest and doe-eyed optimism is nice to a point, but when you get to a track like "My Eyes" you just want to stick a finger down your throat and gag. "Cringe inducing" doesn't even begin to describe the violent gag-reflex that album closer "New Amsterdam" inspires. Healy's feeble tribute to his favorite film icons is embarrassingly bad and may go down as the worst song of the year, period.

Let me get off the subject here as well and rant about something that really gripes my ass. I am so tired of this adult-contemporary style that Travis have married themselves to. These are the guys that broke into the music industry with the single "All I Wanna Do Is Rock" for God's sake! Adam Mast and myself recently saw these guys at Coachella and they still play all those early rockin' tunes live and they sounded fantastic. Is it too much to ask that Healy and the boys loosen up on their albums and let those devil horns fly a bit? The Boy With No Name is simply passable at best and until Travis find a way to return to their former ragged glory (sooner rather than later) even long-time fans might want to start thinking about throwing in the towel on these once promising and much lauded Scotsmen.