Robbie Williams
Intensive Care

THE REVIEW

Robbie Williams is an artist.
Amidst the chatter about ephemeral new rock idols, budding (shaved) pop lolitas, and the many musical trends that keep overlapping, regularly sweeping away figures faithful to the cliché dictated by Andy Warhol on the famous 15 minutes of fame, good old Robbie remains a media phenomenon of his own, a thoroughly European pride, not conforming in the least to the stereotypes of American R'n'B/hip hop stars or boy bands masquerading as neo-metal groups.

Yes, because Williams' quarter of an hour of fame has now lasted for 10 years, and the very fact of being the only one to have reinvented a career and credibility after being part of one of the most famous and criticized teen bands by the press, has over time become a strength, gaining more relevance and depth album after album.

Robbie Williams is an artist, a great artist: he has made himself a work of art, for better or for worse. He has turned his private life into an intriguing and relentless "portrait of Dorian Gray," witnessed by his most blatantly autobiographical songs. He has chosen to embody a thousand identities (and not exactly the easiest ones, from Frank Sinatra to Freddie Mercury, touching as many musical genres as possible) without ever achieving full marks but also without having to run away with his tail between his legs, bolstered by one of the few genuinely "authentic" and authentically irreverent personalities in the static and musty showbiz of these depressing years.
Since leaving Take That, Robbie Williams has navigated various personal crises and scandals that at times could have fatally undermined his solo career: yet, in a decade, he has pulled 5 solo albums out of the hat, a "Live At Knebworth" in front of 250,000 screaming English fans, a daring album of '50s evergreen covers, and a best-selling Greatest Hits.
Hard to do better than that, right?

And yet, the impression one gets from a first listen to "Intensive Care" (a title that sounds like a program, and reading several lyrics, has a quite indicative value) is that the now-thirtysomething Williams is going through a period that is surely not easy, but which could bring great results from a strictly musical point of view: already, the previous "Escapology" of 2002 had represented a turning point from the lacquered and winking pop of his beginnings toward decidedly more "mature" stylistic solutions, but with the departure of the trusty Guy Chambers, things indeed seem to have changed.

In fact, the entrance of Stephen "Tin Tin" Duffy into the "Williams stable" (a celebrated name for fans of English pop, a refined cult songwriter, founder of Duran Duran and voice of Lilac Time, who has never had the success he would have deserved) has brought about almost radical changes in the song structures: the single "Tripping", with its irresistibly evoking the white reggae of the Clash and the Specials in a crescendo culminating in a typically '80s finale, is an example. The arrangements, of course, are impeccable, most of the tracks perhaps require a few more listens compared to the past, but we are still talking about very high-level adult pop, in which Williams literally bares himself with lyrics that are almost embarrassing for their frankness (the punk pop of "Your Gay Friend", a possible single, and the bitter final ballad "King Of Bloke & Bird" which Robbie refuses to sing live as it's "too painful").

Robbie Williams, as a seasoned frontman and modern crooner, allows himself to pay tribute (in a very personal way) without causing outrage to the truly sacred monsters of rock: Williams becomes David Bowie in the touching "The Trouble With Me", Morrissey in "Spread Your Wings" (on a melodic plot that very much recalls "Girlfriend In A Coma" by the Smiths), Mick Jagger in "A Place To Crash" (with a great Keith Richards-like riff), Paddy McAloon of Prefab Sprout in "Please Don’t Die", and even Leonard Cohen and Neil Young. Yet, "Intensive Care" is 100% Robbie Williams, in all his theatricality: of course, Stephen Duffy's contribution is certainly felt, and just listening to tracks like the opening "Ghosts" and "Sin Sin Sin", indebted to those gloomy and melancholic British bands of the '80s (Waterboys, Deacon Blue, Aztec Camera) of which Tin Tin himself was a part, is another key to this work, namely Williams' recall to the age of adolescence, irretrievably lost among the memories that follow one after the other endlessly (especially in relation to his dizzying personal story).

From all these considerations, I thus come to judge this album as a decidedly honest product, with beautiful songs, and very interesting from various points of view, not only from a musical standpoint: Williams' limit has always been trying to please as many tastes as possible; this time, the impression is that he wanted to please only himself, and that's just fine.