Travis - 10 Songs review: Togetherness shines through in perfectly polished pop songs

“This isn’t a rehearsal, this is the take. Promises you once kept are going to break.” So sings Fran Healy on Waving at the Window, the first song on the band’s ninth studio album.

Incredibly, it’s been more than 25 years since Healy, Andy Dunlop, Dougie Payne and Neil Primrose rocked up to a certain Glasgow rehearsal room, but the band’s togetherness shines through on these perfectly polished pop songs, interlaced with delicate piano and impassioned lyrics.

Uptempo number A Ghost cuts through this at times saccharine sweetness: “And I wonder as I walk away, did I ever love it all the way? Did I open up my heart and say it like I mean it?” The hand-drawn promo video that Healy made with his teenage son is well worth checking out too.

The Only Thing, a country-tinged duet with Susanna Hoffs from the Bangles, is the standout, pairing note-perfect harmonies with steel guitar. And it contains a great line: “You are the record in the record shop nobody wants to buy”.

It’s a lyric that will resonate dearly with Travis fans from back in the day.