Fran Healy didn’t plan to write the most Glaswegian F-bomb-laden anthem of 2024. It just sort of...happened. “I think I broke the world record—even more than rappers—for saying the F word in the first 30 seconds of a song,” he says, laughing. “We put it at the end of the album because we thought, fuck man, it sets the wrong tone.”
The song is called “LA Times,” also the title of the new Travis record, a visceral not-quite-love letter to Los Angeles that’s part Laurel Canyon hallucination, part late-stage capitalist meltdown diary. “It’s the coal miner’s canary for the world right now,” Healy says. “Everything’s happening here, good and bad. You’re living on a pressure point.”
Healy’s lived in LA for seven years, but this is the first Travis record where the city finally “slipped in.” The album opener “Bus” sets the tone—dreamy, cinematic, deceptively simple. The closing title track lets loose. And in between, Healy’s giving sharp side-eye to internet toxicity on “Spontaneous Combust” and cultural gaslighting on, well, “Gaslight.” “It’s the most recent label we’ve come up with,” he says. “Everyone’s brushing up against it—politicians, teachers, family members. It’s passive, but it’s control.”
He’s not just writing about it—he’s opting out. “Social media brings out the absolute worst in people,” Healy says. “You wouldn’t say half that shite to someone’s face in a bar in Glasgow—you’d get thrown out.”
Instead, he’s trying to focus on songs that might outlive the mess. “I only want to write songs that’ll still be around in 25 years,” he says. “Most of it’s shite, but you sift through and find a couple of diamonds.” That philosophy stretches back to The Man Who, the band’s 1999 slowcore-in-a-Britpop-world breakout. “Everyone thought it was commercial suicide,” he recalls. “Then it took off. That’s when I realized—there are no rules. Just luck.”
Even the album’s cover art is part of a grand unspoken plan. “The first was shot in the morning, The Invisible Band in the afternoon, The Boy with No Name at sunset. This one had to be nighttime. We’re ticking off the day in real time,” he smirks.
And what does it feel like to release one of your best albums a quarter century after the one that made you? “They’re different kids,” he says. “But this one... this one I’ve lived with for a year, and I still want to play it.”
Watch the interview above and then check out the video below.
