CDs of the week: Robbie Williams has a cracking comeback album

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Robbie Williams

Paul Weller

Jamie Cullum

Biffy Clyro

Steve Martin

Matthew Halsall

Dame Shirley Bassey

POP
ROBBIE WILLIAMS
Reality Killed the Video Star
(Virgin)
****
It's hard to feel too much sympathy for Robbie Williams, a man who mortgaged his soul for fame and then found he couldn't keep up the repayments. Still, the artistic and commercial failure of his last album, Rudebox, and the refusal of America to acknowledge his existence seem to have bludgeoned some common sense into him — hence his near-invisibility since his Close Encounters tour dribbled to a halt in December 2006. Yet if Williams and his public needed a break from each other, for all his Butlins' Redcoat gurning, the boy-man himself is a genuine, old-school pop star. On balance, it's better when he's around and, as he proves on You Know Me (“I've been doing what I like, when I like, how I like: it's joyless”), he's not entirely without self-awareness. For this eighth solo album, made in the shadow of Take That's astonishingly successful comeback, he's seen musical sense, too, recruiting that obsessive, perfectionist producer Trevor Horn (half of Buggles, of Video Killed the Radio Star fame) to knock Reality Killed the Video Star into glorious shape. On its finest moments — the thoughtful, piano-led Blasphemy; the cacophonous throb of Difficult For Weirdos, and the low-key Pet Shop Boys-esque grace of Last Days of Disco — Horn has succeeded more than Williams probably deserves. And when Williams's pleasing, pleading voice is coupled with a background orchestra on Superblind he has something he's never previously come close to: gravitas. And who could possibly have predicted that?
JOHN AIZLEWOOD

PAUL WELLER
Paul Weller Deluxe Edition
(Island)
****
A re-release of the 1992 solo album that marked Paul Weller's return from the post-Style Council wilderness of nappy-changing and too much nightclubbing. This 2009 album comes, naturally enough, with a few added bells and whistles. In CD format the solo album has one disc featuring the original cut. Uh Huh Oh Yeh, Bull-Rush, Bitterness Rising and Kosmos stand the test of time every bit as well as any Jam track and considerably better than a Style Council number. Pop in disc two and the Weller fan gets a treat of demos, alternative side and b-sides.

Featuring the original cover art, the gate-fold sleeve drops open to reveal the modfather in all his pudding-bowl barnet, frilly-shirted glory. The accompanying 28-page booklet contains observations from Weller and his band on a time that could as equally seen him having to rely on the pub-circuit scene to make ends meet. However, in the end, as the sleevenotes quaintly reveal, it was the star's father (and manager), the late John Weller who roundly booted his popstar son up the backside, telling him to get out on the road and do what he does best.

This release is a must for all the old fans who've played the original to death and those younger fans who want to know how their idol came back from the dead.
JAMES ANTHONY

JAMIE CULLUM
The Pursuit
(Decca)
****
I've always had a problem with Jamie Cullum, a suspicion that in some nearby parallel universe he is part of a music'n'comedy supper club trio with Ant & Dec. On the basis of The Pursuit, I withdraw this silly calumny. The record does have its predictable moments of keyboard glad-handing — Cole Porter's Just One of Those Things is not an inspired opener — but there's plenty of good stuff. I'm All Over It is a cracking pop song, with shades of Elton John in ebullient mood, while Cullum's cover of Rihanna's Don't Stop the Music sets modern R&B in a swoopingly grand context. Best of all is the arrangement of If I Ruled the World, built around a simple three-note progression which will make your jaw drop at how Harry Secombe's fat-cheeked and bumptious original is transformed into a modern classic.
PETE CLARK

Biffy Clyro
Only Revolutions
(14th Floor)
***
When Biffy Clyro released their fourth album, Puzzle, in 2007, it moved the moody Scottish trio from cult favourites to crossover successes. Only Revolutions sees the band continue towards the mainstream. Produced by Garth Richardson (Rage Against the Machine, Red Hot Chili Peppers) and mixed by Andy Wallace (Nirvana, Coldplay), it is their most polished effort to date. The budget now stretches to an orchestra, which lends grandeur to the riff-based rock of The Captain and Many of Horror. But it's simple pleasures that interest vocalist Simon Neil: seldom has the singer sounded so happy as when singing about horses, mountains and that most rock'n'roll of locations — the quarry. Superstardom may be theirs yet.  
RICK PEARSON

WORLD
STEVE MARTIN
The Crow
(Rounder Records)
****
Here's a curiosity — a rootsy banjo album by celebrated American comedian Steve Martin. As well as being hilarious as the long-nosed fireman in Roxanne, he's an accomplished five-string banjo player and has composed most of the songs here. Daddy Played the Banjo takes you straight into an old-timey bluegrass world, although it's not autobiographical. Martin grew up in southern California. His instrumental dexterity is displayed in Clawhammer Medley, he pulls in a showbiz vocalist, Dolly Parton, and performs one comic song but says: “I don't demean the instrument by doing banjo jokes.” He's at the Royal Festival Hall on Monday.
SIMON BROUGHTON

JAZZ
MATTHEW HALSALL
Colour Yes
(Gondwana)
****
Good to know that the profound spirituality of the immortal Coltranes, John and Alice, lives on in Manchester. Trumpeter Halsall makes an unusually mature debut here with a quintet co-starring the city's excellent saxophonist Nat Burchall. Both epitomise the mantra that depth of feeling counts for more than empty technique. I've Been Here Before, one of three luminous tracks featuring harpist Rachael Gladwin, must be among the most lyrical performances by a British jazz group. Halsall's admirable purity of tone and economy of notes mark him as a newcomer to watch, and the experienced Burchall has never sounded better.
JACK MASSARIK

DAME SHIRLEY BASSEY
The Performance
(Geffen)
***
If the songs are chosen carefully, getting a veteran to sing songs by people half their age can be carried off without any dad-at-a-disco moments. Shirley Bassey sounds well within her comfort zone on specially composed tracks by young folk including Manic Street Preachers, KT Tunstall and Rufus Wainwright. Her first studio album in more than 20 years should reach a new audience because, crucially, only John Barry gives her something that sounds like a Bond theme. Elsewhere she finds a surprising subtlety on Richard Hawley's gorgeous ballad After the Rain, while Gary Barlow's This Time already sounds like a standard. Her voice has rarely sounded so graceful.
DAVID SMYTH

 

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