The english patient

Source : Q Magazin Intensive Care Review
Quoted from:http://www.fans-supreme.de
Thanks to rwap

'This time he's addicted to the 80's Robbie William's sixth solo album and the first since his bitter split with Midas like producer and songwriting partner Guy Chambers begins with a semi ironic validiction "Here I stand, victorious" he crows over the dramatic intro of the opening track Ghosts "The only man who made you come" Like most of Williams's proclamations, his word are loaded with a multitude of meanings. It's a smirking, self-mocking reference to his reputation as a Lothario and a sly dig at the slavish fascination of the media who perpetrate it. At the same time, it nods to those triumphant mega-shows at Knebworth Park in August 2003, and, by extension, offers a pre-emptive acknowledgement that his ever-devoted following will emerge, 50 minutes and 12 tracks later, flushed and happy and reaching for the post-coital cigarettes. Most pertinently of all, though, it's the sound of Williams putting a cap on the first, wildly successful chapter of his solo career, and implicitly declaring that this album marks the start of Phase Two.

On the face of it, Williams's latest incarnation is much the same as the one that came before it, an occasionally grating mix of the cocky, the vulnerable, and the acutely self-aware. The main difference here is that of age - significantly, the singer turned 30 while making Intensive Care. The sight of youth vanishing in the rear view mirror of his life has patently had an impact. Where the grandstanding pop of 2002's Escapology was driven by an appalled fascination with fame, this one is haunted by an overwhelming nostalgia for times and places long gone. 'I used to live round here,' he sings on Spread Your Wings, a sparkling ode to a lost love that name-checks '80 school disco favourites Oran 'Juice' Jones and Jocelyn Brown, 'I was the boy with the flash clothes, she was the girl with the acid tongue.' This fixation on the recent past extends to Williams's choice of replacement for Guy Chambers. His new right-hand man is Stephen Duffy, the chameleonic former Duran Duran guitarist who scored his sole Top 10 hit with the frothy dance pop of 1985's Kiss Me. In his role as producer, Duffy has given Intensive Care a lustrous sheen unafraid to wear its '80s influences on its sleeve. The spectre of sparkly-suited orchestral synth-pop kings ABC hovers over the grandiose, if sentimental Please Don't Die. More bizarrely, Sin Sin Sin is a peculiar hybrid of the Pet Shop Boys (the stacatto synth-baseline) and youthful Williams favourites Prefab Sprout (the sprightly guitar jangle of the chorus). As last year's Radio proved, Duffy isn't afraid to coax out Williams's spirit of adventure. Here, this manifests itself most obviously in the album's first single, Tripping. With its Police-style cod-reggae beat, cracked falsetto and amusingly unconvincing hardman threats ('Trouble is coming, there's gonna be violence….'), Williams has already proclaimed it his 'mini gangster opera'. In that respect, it's more Lock. Stock and Two Smoking Barrels than Pulp Fiction, but, like Guy Ritchie's gangster flick, its idiosyncrasies only add to its charm. As with any Robbie Williams album, there's an undeniable wit to it all. Make Me Pure is an archly self-referential ballad that sees Williams mocking his own populist tendencies. 'Sing a song to reel 'em in,' he purrs over a strummed, Angels-style intro, before proclaiming that he'll be 'standing for election all across the known universe.' And he still gives good pastiche - Duffy's Start Me Up-style riff on A Place To Crash is the best Rolling Stones rip off this side of Primal Scream's Rocks. Inevitably, though, the internal battle between the two sides of his personality - the mischievous imp and the Butlins Redcoat - that plays over every Robbie Williams album can only have one winner. His unshakeable desire to please both his fans and his paymasters at EMI - who, after all, forked out 80 million pounds for him prior to Escapology - means that the bulk of Intensive Care is rooted firmly on safer ground. The tastefully sweeping Advertising Space is little more than a theme tune waiting for a rom-com, while the sleek FM radio clock of The Trouble With Me gives lie to his sniffy, if disingenuous, claim that he's not interested in cracking America any more. Still, both are better than Your Gay Friend - a pointless extension of the faux-homosexual posturing he's sporadically indulged in over the past few years. If his lifeless vocal is anything to go by, he's as bored with it as the rest of us. Ultimately, of course, the high stakes for all involved mean that Intensive Care was never going to upset the apple cart. For all its rosy glow of nostalgia, it's essentially just another Robbie Williams album - occasionally spectacular, more frequently merely solid. The more he changes, it seems, the more he stays the same.'