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**1/2 Travis

THE INVISIBLE BAND

(Epic)

Well, these four melancholy Scots may be overstating their case a bit with the title of their third album. Sure, they might feel invisible here in the US, where the album that made them stars in Britain — 1999’s The Man Who (Epic) — never achieved the breakthrough that Coldplay have with a sound that isn’t all that different from Travis’s. Spin even picked Travis as one of the “most underrated” bands of 2000. But that’s just how it is for Britpop in this, the era of aggro rap rock and nü-metal. And it’s not as if The Invisible Band made any concessions to American audiences — if anything, it’s more preciously Britpop than The Man Who, an album that featured a very pretty, very Morrissey song called “Why Does It Always Rain on Me?”

ühe opening track and rst single, “Sing,” urges a certain Nora to “Sing, sing, sing, sing/For the love you bring won’t mean a thing/Unless you sing, sing, sing, sing.” And no, it doesn’t appear that frontman Fran Healy’s kidding. In “Dear Diary” he asks, “What’s wrong with me”; in “Flowers in the Window” he again serenades Nora, this time with the refrain “I love you so let’s watch the owers grow.” Fortunately, Healy sings real nice in his best Radioheaded falsetto, and his bandmates come across with enough folkishly pop hooks (think late-’80s R.E.M.) to offset the occasional Hallmark moment.

— Matt Ashare