Reviews: Music - Travis and Art - Tony O’Malley
How ironic that one of Travis’ best-selling albums should have been called The Invisible Band. In the late ’90s the Scottish quartet could plausibly lay claim to the title of Britain’s biggest arena act.
However, their anthemic rock was eventually outflanked, critically and commercially, by acolytes Keane, Snow Patrol and, especially , Coldplay. Without a significant hit for nearly a decade and, just back from a four-year touring hiatus, if you didn’t know better you might think they had been victims of some indie pop Stalinist plot to scrub them from the annals.
But it is lazy and cheap to write the Glaswegians off as merely one step in the evolutionary chain that led to Chris Martin bleating in front of Wembley stadium . Travis’ finest songs transcend arena rock’s inherent limitations and have real emotional bite. This becomes obvious ten minutes into the sell-out show as they reach for 1999’s ‘Driftwood’, a swelling rumination on mortality that has universal reach without seeming hokey or maudlin (the chief criticism laid at their door).
Alas, ‘Driftwood’, in part, makes an impression because of all the creaky clutter surrounding it. Travis’ newer tunes, especially, feel like bloodless retreads. Several recent compositions — you probably weren’t aware but they have just released their seventh album – come and go almost without anyone seeming to pay any attention while singer Fran Healy’s tendency to gush between tracks quickly grates.
Nonetheless, they have in their repertoire half a dozen or so which have weathered the years surprisingly well (they omit their finest single, 2000’s ‘Coming Around’). Dismissed as trite and obvious in 1999, posterity has imbued ‘Turn’ with a curious nostalgic glow. Even ‘Why Does It Rain On Me?, the pandering singalong that turned the critics on them, is more nuanced and heartfelt than you remember. Travis deserve better than to be damned as a rough draft of a formula that later gave the world Coldplay.
Star Rating: 4/5
Tony O’Malley’s career was unusual by any standards. He worked as a banker into his 40s, and then took early retirement on health grounds.
For the next 50 years and more he dedicated himself to creating art, completing several thousand paintings and any number of wooden assemblages, such as those currently on view in the RHA.
O’Malley lived in Cornwall for many years before returning to Callan, Co Kilkenny in 1990. He got about St Ive’s on a motorbike, often stopping to collect driftwood and other material along the beaches. These he fashioned into his first ‘constructions’, as he called them.
The earliest works here — Crooked Circle, December Light & Shadow, and Silent Winter — date from 1964. Their playful nature suggests that O’Malley may have seen his assemblages as a diversion from the more serious endeavour of painting.
If so, it proved to be an absorbing hobby, as O’Malley continued with his constructions well into his 80s: one of the latest pieces here is With Love To Dearest Janie, a construction of wood, nails and string he presented to his wife on her birthday in 1995.
What is most striking about these sculptural works is how closely they resemble O’Malley’s paintings.
For much of his career O’Malley favoured a dark palette of blacks and greys, before a sojourn in the Bahamas alerted him to what he might achieve with a greater range of colours.
This is reflected in the current exhibition. The sombre shades of the 1960s and ’70s give way to the vivid, vibrant colours of the ’80s, when he made such pieces as Bahamas Collage — Grey, Red, Yellow and Bahamas Totem I.
All the works in this show are from O’Malley’s estate.
Many reflect his abiding interest in the natural world. November Wood, Spring Crow, Winter Line with Greys: the titles alone suggest the depth of O’Malley’s engagement with his environment.
Some of the most beautiful pieces are the Sea Harps, constructions of wood, nails and string that look like they might be played by the wind.
* Until Dec 20.
Star Rating: 4/5
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