Clocking in at 75 baffling and exhausting minutes, Robbie Williams’ seventh album is everything a pop record should not be: portentous, potty-mouthed, over-weening. Williams, now 32 and tiring of the chart wars, is, one guesses, either bent on frightening the beyjasus out of fans, or has finally succumbed to the mania that seemed always to glimmer between the cracks of that cheeky-imp leer. Whatever’s eating him, the result is one of the most dribble-down-its-mouth bizarre mainstream albums in recent memory.
Saving Rudebox from itself is a top of the line production crew: William Orbit, The Pet Shop Boys, grime duo Soul Mekanik and house guru Joey Negro all have an opportunity to reshape Robbie in their own image and their studio chops ensure the project is some way shy of a travesty.
You will be relieved, for instance, to know that ‘Rudebox’, the single, is, by a distance, the daftest thing on the record. Here Robbie, against the grind and shuffle of a boilerplate funk breakdown, extols us to “rock the three stripes not the Asics” while getting his groove on in quite ludicrous fashion. As the chorus, a spew of distorted Barry White vocals, rolls around for the fifth time, the listener might be forgiven to attacking their stereo with a meat-cleaver.
Evidence of William’s plunge off the deep end continues to stack up over the LP’s opening third. ‘Viva Life On Mars‘ trafficks in apocalyptic country rock: not entirely inaccurately Williams describes it as ‘sci fi hoedown’. ‘King Of The Bongo’, meanwhile, is a distressingly exuberant Manu Chao cover with a Lily Allen backing vocal.
Scarier yet is ‘Keep On’, which sees our unhinged hero attempting to cultivate the Mike Skinner within. Notwithstanding a satisfyingly squelchy bass-line, the end product is every bit as limp as one would expect. In no way a geezer, Williams’ Joe Bloke shtick would be laughable were it not so cack-handed.
Only as the album lurches towards its midpoint does some calm descend. ‘She’s Madonna’, coasting on a glossy Pet Shop Boys production job, is a misty eyed ballad in the tradition of William’s finest – i.e. slushiest – work; ‘The Actor’, for its part, is a passable tilt at euro-techno, featuring Williams and an unidentified female vocalist engaging in a frosty Felix Housecat/Miss Kitten back and forth.
Significantly, Rudebox’s two most satisfying moments are covers. William’s reading of the Human League’s ‘Louise,’ upholstered with gleaming William Orbit production, finds the singer swooning at the feet of the song – the only point across the entire record where the wideboy Robbie persona is asked to take a back seat. No less affecting is ‘Kiss Me’, a weak-kneed version of Stephen Duffy’s mid ‘80s hit , wherein Williams delivers a more than passable impression of a heartbroken shyboy. Sandwiched in between is the brilliantly screwy ‘We’re The Pet Shop Boys’, written by the electro artist My Robot Friend and overseen by – oh, can you smell the irony – Neil Tenant and Chris Lowe.
Over the closing strait Williams appears to experience a sudden jolt of clarity; realising perhaps that he stands in danger of frightening off the entirety of his fan-base, Robbie trots out ‘Millennium’-shaped ballad, ‘The ‘90s’, a wrenching rumination on his Take That years and the ravaging consequences of fame and wealth. Too little, too late, those diehards that have not already taken refuge in the high ground may bleat.
Bloated and barking, Rudebox feels like nothing less than the last will and testament of a pop icon who has fallen out of love with the medium and is scrabbling for a fresh direction. One hopes he finds the inner peace he so clearly, and desperately, seeks.