Labels: Suspect Device
Review by: Andy Malcolm
Pop punk and an album title which is a baseball reference, thats a surefire way to get my attention. They even put pictures of George Brett on the cover, though its safe to say that Travis Cut hit better than .305 over the course of this 13 track album.
Spoiled for choice with pop punk the past couple of weeks. Last week there was the highly ace Sicko album, and now this. Wahey! First up is the song “My Idea Of Fun” which they put out on a split single with Speedurchin last year. I panned them for being average. Having since seen Travis Cut live, I have to change my opinion. They deal in high quality and relatively pacey, smiley pop punk. Yup, so they adopt a slight American style at times, but who cares when they do it so well?
Difficult to pick out the best songs, as it’s all over a similar high standard, but I’d say that the superbly self-demeaning “Another Dumb Punk Rock Song All About A Girl” sneaks off with first prize, with some inspired “1,2,3,4” and “Oi! Oi! Oi!” chanting. Tap them toes.
What else? “Sorry” sounds like popsters Midget when they used to make all those deadly infectious pop punk songs. Also here is “Complicated” which turned up as a single a while back. And having just done some research (flicking through back issues of Fracture) it seems that “No Good With Words” did too. Hmm, 4 out of 13 songs already released – you could almost mistake this lot for a major label band!
They have a bit of a jape on the B side, with a cover version (“Back Of My Hand” by the Jags), and the bizarro “Fuck All Y’All” which starts off like its going to be a hardcore song, before becoming a brief pop punk track which sole lyrical content consists of the title of the song being repeated over and over. They end up on a nice acoustic effort – “Torniquet”.
I bet they had fun making this album. It was recorded at the Inner Ear Studio in the US, and was produced by Dave Smalley (All, Dag Nasty, Down By Law). Then cropping up in the thanks list are Brian Baker and J Robbins. Not bad going for a band that started out in Harlow.