Mojave 3 – Excuses for Travellers (2000)

Mojave 3 was born on the ruins of the British shoegaze band Slowdive (they made a comeback a couple of years ago). The style of their music changed quite dramatically with the change of the band name. Mojave 3's music has influences from Americana folk and country, while the melodies are channelling endearing indie pop. I remember falling in love with this album as soon as I heard it many many years ago. I only bought the album a lot later, because it was difficult to find. I have also listened to the band's other albums and even though there is some excellent stuff on those, I think this is their best album. It's one of those albums that are really great to listen to when tired. Even though there are some slightly rocking bits on the album, it mostly just stays slow and dreamy, which is great if you want to get meditative on the sofa.


I like the album art in the cover. Even though it's super simple, it took me a while to realise what it is. The guitar player's slouching posture looks exactly how I would probably look like if I was playing these songs alone on a guitar. This is the kind of music where it's easy to hear the emotion behind the performance. It may not be technically anything special, but the mood that flows through is captivating.

The album starts with beautiful acoustic guitar and piano combo in the song In Love With a View. There are some country-style slide guitars on top of it as well. The vocals are absolutely beautifully fragile and the simple waving melody has some hypnotising qualities. Next up is Trying to Reach You, which slows the tempo down maybe even more. There's a nice banjo in the background that kind of reminds me of Sufjan Stevens' early albums. My Life In Art starts with almost classical sounding acoustic guitars that get slow accompaniment from bass and electric guitars and very smooth vocals. Here the band sounds more like Slowdive than on perhaps any other song on the album. Return to Sender is very far from Elvis' song with the same name. The acoustic guitar strumming along with baroque pop pianos has all those aesthetic qualities that I love about endearing indie pop. When You're Drifting changes the sounds a bit by bringing in a trumpet that introduces some harder edges to the otherwise incredibly smooth sound. The synth base behind to vocals kind of reminds me of some Grandaddy songs. Any Day Will Be Fine has more major chords and that makes it a happier song in my mind. This song also grows almost loud with proper drum beats and electric guitars. She Broke You So Softly returns to basics, low volume, melancholic melodies and dreamy atmosphere. Prayer for the Paranoid is the song that I remember best from this album, for some reason. The vocals are relatively a lot louder than the backgrounds and I think that's partly why you listen to the lyrics a lot easier in this song than others. This is a fantastic example of sad indie folk that I loved above all other musical styles for many many years. Even now I get goosebumps with this song. Bringin' Me Home is the only song on the album with lead vocals from Rachel Goswell. All the other songs are led by Neil Halstead. I think it would be great if Goswell had more songs on the album just to give a bit of variety, even if I love Halstead's trembling voice. The album ends with Got My Sunshine that has some melancholic trumpet sounds on simple, picked acoustic guitars.

I don't know if there are some music videos from this album, but at least I couldn't find them. It's kind of a shame, because there's lots of material here that could've been nicely accompanied by some great visuals.

The title of the album is quite timely now that climate change has become such a huge challenge for our times. I'm sure that's not what Mojave 3 meant back in 2000, but travelling, that was merely a positive thing a couple of decades ago, has turned into one of the worst polluters of our times and as someone who loves to travel, I feel like I have to try and justify my travelling with a bunch of excuses. The fact is that if I can't travel, I feel like I can't live my life to the full. If only we could get rid of the work-centric world where we would all have more time to do our travelling slower and more environmentally.

I've almost forgotten just how great this album is. I'm mostly slightly bored with the music I listened to for years and years before I got a bit more adventurous, searching for new genres, but with Mojave 3, I feel like I can listen to it with fresh ears now and just enjoy the immense beauty and simplicity of it.

Listen to the album on Spotify.