Unpolished charm

Take a quick glance at any end-of-the-year best album lists and you'll see that lo-fi was the name of the game in 2010. Call it what you want: noise pop, bedroom chic or DIY, but music that's been made to sound as if it's been recorded in a wind tunnel on a budget of precisely zero has been undeniably in vogue this season.

Luckily for them, the American duo Travels mines a similar vein of DIY style. This duo of Baltimore natives Mona Elliott and Anar Badalov has been creating its own brand of skewed, electro-tinged pop for nearly four years, however, so any accusations of bandwagon-jumping would be inaccurate, to say the least.

"We definitely believe that less is more," Badalov tells The Prague Post. "We never use more than three instruments, and we're both big fans of minimalist art where the white space can often reveal more than what's actually painted. For us, we want the space in our music to become part of the song."

On one level, you could compare Travels to the likes of No Age or Lightning Bolt, as they possess a similar boundless energy and sense of unpredictability resonating from two 20-something musicians. But what sets this pair apart is the intimacy of their songwriting - a product of having lived and worked in such close proximity to one another since meeting in 2007.

"We lived in a small apartment together at first, and naturally we couldn't help but make music together," Badalov says. "The writing we do together is really natural; whatever happens just happens, and we go with it."

The first fruits of Travels' labor came in October 2007 with the release of their self-titled debut album, a release that in typical DIY fashion featured hand-painted artwork.

"The record was us getting to know each other, both as musicians and as people," Badalov says. "It was also an incredibly therapeutic process for us as Mona was diagnosed with breast cancer about two months after I moved in with her, and we wrote and recorded the album through her treatment and recovery."

Full of lo-fi harmonies and rickety percussion, the album resonates with an endearing, unpolished charm, but Travels' follow-up, last year's The Hot Summer, is the best introduction to the band. Recorded by engineer Jeff Lipton, whose work with The Magnetic Fields has turned him into something of an indie go-to guy, the album is peppered with white noise and eerie distortion and easily ranks as one of the top albums of 2009.

Travels' latest effort, Robber on the Run, released in June, further hints that the duo is decidedly up-and-coming. Flitting from syncopated punk-rock squalls to melodic, transient flashes of color, the album is at once chaotic and raw, considered and calm, its codified rhythms layered with crunches of feedback and discordant fuzz.

With the likes of Nick Cave, Tom Waits and the late hip-hop innovator J Dilla cited as influences, it's no wonder that Travels have found their calling in serving up sharp, elegiac musical missives, but with their latest European tour just kicking off, quite how they will channel their newfound energy onto the stage is something that even Badalov is concerned about.

"Before an impending tour, I worry about how we'll come across live," he says. "But as soon as we're finished, I always wish that we could have captured that moment on record. Our live show can be loud, heavy and intense. We can't wait to get out there and start playing."

Prague is new territory for Badalov, but having previously played in the city under her former guise as Victory at Sea, Elliot has been schooling him in the ways of the capital.

"Mona's already talking about drinking lots of absinth," he says. "We just need to figure out how we're going to get the car to the hostel now."

Andrew Fenwick can be reached at
afenwick@praguepost.com