Forgotten Album of the Month: Travis Tooke

Forgotten Album of the Month: Travis Tooke

This is going to be the final post for the Forgotten Album of the Month so I decided to make the final entry the newest one; in late 2007, former For Squirrels/Subrosa guitarist Travis Tooke released his first solo album after a ten year hiatus from the music business. When Artichoke was first released, one could only obtain it via his record company’s website using PayPal. As a result of it’s tiny release, it didn’t even start getting much attention until the summer of 2008 when major publications like Billboard started checking him out. What they discovered was an experimental record but one that was obviously a labor of love.

The first thing one notices when they listen is that his voice has not changed at all but the music has gotten a bit moodier. His ironic wordplay that was all over the Subrosa record is still in full effect on tracks like “Lonely and Not Alone.” For the most post, tracks sound like alternative rock that would’ve been heard on the radio in the mid nineties but towards the end of the record, that’s when he starts to branch out and that’s when it gets interesting. Probably one of the finest tracks on the record, “Two Arm Army” is a diatribe against just about everything and sounds like the ranting of someone who has been in seclusion for the better part of a decade. The vocals are the strongest on the record and ironically, this ended up becoming the single the label tried to push to radio; it didn’t get very far but it did get a ton of spins on MySpace.

Songs like “Anyway” and “Would You Burn?” make this record one of the best records of 2007 but the very last song is hands down, one of the best songs of that year; “Wrongsong” is a moody, organ driven piece that’s one of the most haunting and creepy songs on the record. The lyric ‘fuck me, fuck you like you want me to’ is one of the creepiest lyrics of the year but that’s what makes the song so powerful. Now note there is only one video but that's because there was not much to choose from online, which is a damn shame.

Since 2008, Travis Tooke has gone back into hiding but knowing that Artichoke was a minor success in the underground. Let’s just hope that he won’t disappear for another ten years as people who know about the album spread the word.

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