The name of the album came about when lead singerFran Healy and his partner Nora were deciding on a name for their newly born son. During this time, he sent a photo of his son to a friend by email and labeled the photo "The Boy with No Name". Healy revealed this on The Chris Moyles Show during an interview. Healy has also revealed in pre-album release performances that some tracks are influenced by his developing family status, such as "My Eyes" being about his new son or "Battleships" referring to ups and downs of relationships. Travis dedicated this album to the Abbey Road Studios chief master engineer Chris Blair and British world champion rally driverRichard Burns, who died of a brain tumour at the age of 34 in 2005. During recording the band discovered they were nearby British band Feeder in the same studio both in different recording rooms. Feeder were recording what would be their fifth studio album Pushing the Senses. It soon occurred that Fran and Dougie helped out Feeder with some recording of the album; their voices appeared as backing vocals for the final chorus of the track "Tumble and Fall" and was its first single. For the track "Under the Moonlight", backing vocals were recorded by singer-songwriter KT Tunstall, and the song "Battleships" features backing vocals by Julia Stone.
Release
The Boy with No Name entered at No. 4 on the UK Album Charts. In the U.S., the album debuted at number 58 on the Billboard 200, selling 12,000 copies in its first week. The album went gold in the UK. "Closer" was released as the first single from the album in the United Kingdom on 23 April 2007, and peaked at No. 10 in the UK Singles Chart. Second single "Selfish Jean" made No. 30. The final single, "My Eyes", reached No. 60 – their lowest chart placing during their career at the time. The full album was available to purchase at the Virgin Megastore at the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival in California over the weekend of 27 April 2007 – 29 April 2007.
Reception
The Boy with No Name received mixed reviews from music critics. At Metacritic, which assigns a normalised rating out of 100 to reviews from mainstream critics, the album received an average score of 57 based on 20 reviews, which indicates "mixed or average reviews". NME gave the album 2 out of 10 and labelled it "impotent aural gruel" with "all the soul of a platform announcement".
Track listing
Chart
Personnel
;Travis
Fran Healy – lead vocals, guitar, harmonica, piano
