“Don't ever misconstrue melody with weakness. I think Thom Yorke misconstrues that. I'm not afraid of melody. Radiohead are.” Travis' Fran Healy explains why he's “frustrated” with Radiohead's Thom Yorke

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Travis' Fran Healy says that he gets "frustrated" listening to modern-day Radiohead, as he believes that his friend Thom Yorke is one of music's great melody writers, but has opted out of trying to write listener-friendly anthems.

"I love melodies," Healy tells Louder. "Don't ever misconstrue melody with weakness. I think Thom misconstrues that, or associates melody with a sort of namby-pamby-ness or whatever, and I think the opposite is true. I think to be melodic is one of the strongest things.

"Why do we know Radiohead? Why are we still listening to Radiohead? It's not because of the last record they brought out, are you fucking kidding me? Tell me what track four was? Go on. You could ask Radiohead's greatest fan what track four was and they wouldn't fucking know. But they'll know what track four was on their second album, because it was melodic, and that melody got them. Every band worth their salt, it's melody that got them where they are, and I'm not afraid of that. And they are."

"I know Thom, and Thom is just as ambitious as I am," Healy continues. "There's a Q [now closed British music magazine] interview around Kid A, where he talks about how difficult it is to find melody, right? And he just figured out how to do his business without writing songs.... But, we're still singing Creep. We're still singing Street Spirit. We're still singing the songs that made them famous. And that's what he turned his back on.

"I don't want to get in a fight with Thom because I like him, but that's where I get frustrated with someone as talented as Thom. I'm like, Come on, man, you were one of the greatest melody writers that there was, and you shat out of it. I'm still putting my fucking neck out there looking like a twat, trying to find those melodies."

Read Louder's interview with Fran Healy here.

In a recent interview with The Irish Times, Healy admitted that he and Radiohead's frontman were initially somewhat guarded with one another but bonded on a night down the pub with producer Nigel Godrich, who has worked with both their bands.

“Nigel and him were out, and I turned up,” he recalls. “Thom was, like, ‘What the fuck?’ We had the best night. He got me. He got close enough to be, like, ‘Aah’. Nigel was, like, ‘Thom [says of Healy] ‘He’s really cool.’ And I was, like, Yesssss ... Thom Yorke thinks I’m cool. But, look, he’s a hero of ours – like we are, maybe, to some people. How awesome is it when you hear they think you’re all right?”

Travis' new album, L.A. Times is out now.

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