Chocolate and Vodka :: Travis - 12 Memories: I don't know what it is about heartbreak. Maybe it's just that it's so familiar. Strangely comfortable in the way that old, ill-fitting shoes are. You know that you should get rid of them, but the constant pain is at the very least a reminder that you are alive, because you can't feel pain when you're dead and feeling pain is better than feeling nothing at all.

Take me away, take me away
You said that you were gonna stay
But you’re always lying anyway
You’re gonna suffer if you don’t start breathing now

Now that I need you
You’re going away

Every day, sinking into quicksand
Follow me down the drain

- Quicksand

Twelve Memories, last year’s offering from Travis, has taken a while to impinge on my consciousness. No surprises there - it was released just after I went through a total life meltdown, plummeting through Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs like a dead seagull. I had other things on my mind back in October, like how to retain sanity, how to put back together the remnants of my life (an ongoing project), how find a way forward.

Thus it was only last week, after regaining daily access to the wonderful XFM, a London indie radio station that I used to listen to all the time back when I lived in Reading, that I was reminded of what a wonderfully beautiful voice Fran Healy has.