Uneasy listening

It’s Christmas week and regardless of our musical tastes, we don’t mind a bit of ‘easy listening’ while we mull over our mulled wines, Indrajit Hazra explores.

It’s Christmas week and regardless of our musical tastes, we don’t mind a bit of ‘easy listening’ while we mull over our mulled wines. I usually take out my Cole Porter box set, give into a Sinatra or two and, in honour of the Ghost of Christmas Past, even play my cob-webbed Elton John CD. A few weeks ago, in anticipation of getting into this plum pudding mood, I picked up the new Robbie Williams album, Reality Killed the Video Star. Robbie’s not the hyperkinetic singing lad that he was a few years ago. But if anyone was passed the Elton John candle, it’s Robbie. Strong voice and plaintive tunes, with a dash of polo-necked brashness, he’s the epitome of 21st century easy listening. That was the notion with which I put in his new CD into the tray. Um...

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The album starts safely enough in ‘Morning sun’ with the usual Robbie Williams ballad-accompanying ‘tum tum tum’ piano chords. But then we find him singing about how one can “rate” the morning sun in a manner that would make even Paul McCartney, a master of such middle-of-the-road road sign songs, wonder how to spice up such a bland tune with cheesy lyrics (“The morning brings the mystery/ The evening makes it history).

No matter. A faux-Gregorian chant mixed with phat dancefloor beats bring us to ‘Bodies’. The Christian references (“Then Jesus really tried for me” “Jesus didn’t die for you”) could make the song tend towards the old Depeche Mode direction of hormones and theology. But Robbie makes it a Christina Aguilera-Enigma mash-up — which, by the way, isn’t as good as it sounds.

‘Blasphemy’ sounds like a grown-up’s nursery rhyme — with extra sauce and feeling. “What’s so great about/ the Great Depression/ Was it a blast for you?/ Cause it’s blasphemy.” No, Robbie’s not good when he gets into the op-ed writer mode, even when he sounds as if he’s the second lead in Andrew Lloyd Webber’s new musical on the global economic meltdown.

The rock jock emerges from this rubble in ‘Do you mind’. Sounding like an ironic, gyrating Lou Reed on speed, Robbie gets things right when he opens this account with the drawl: “This is a song full of metaphaws..” Robbie was always good with his take on glam, and he remains the well-voiced glitter here.

‘Last days of disco’ with its Eurythmics-synths, turns into a girl band song sung by an ex-boy band member and is, well, something that they can only play in the bar when the things get downright louche. What I’m trying to say here is that this is quite a terrible song. And what’s with the extra brass flourish?

In ‘Somewhere’, Robbie returns to that Andrew Lloyd Webber musical for a inane, 60-second interlude. Things get worse with ‘Deceptacon,’ the tune being as floppy as a snow-filled sock taken out of the microwave. Harp and soprano deliver us to a funk-driven shack in ‘Starstruck’ which at least allows you to shake a leg in a remarkably tuneless album. Robbie goes techno in ‘Difficult for weirdos’ and does a mystical, super-sensitive Sting-thing on ‘Superblind’. Much more head-nodding is ‘Won’t do that’ in which the horn section and piano are taken out for a gentle gambol in the park.

Reality Killed the Video Star is what I feared a Robbie Williams album would turn out to be one day: a record that sounds more like an end-of-the-year strategy to get a good tax break than an album made for listening, easy or not. If Robbie’s voice sounds good on patches in certain tracks, it’s because that’s the only thing he doesn’t have much control over. Otherwise, he tries all the tricks of his trade as long as dozens of violins are involved. No, I’m going to trash this CD in the can and, in keeping with my nitrous oxide-induced mood, play Robbie’s dependably soppy Angels instead.