MUSIC REVIEW: ROBBIE WILLIAMS - 'IN AND OUT OF CONSCIOUSNESS'

Retrospective Album Presents Some of the Most Celebrated Pop Tracks You've Never Heard

By: Andrew Shaw

November 7, 2010

(Astralwerks Records) In and Out of Consciousness is many things.  It’s more than an average ‘Best of’ compilation, and it’s more than a career retrospective. We’re told that the inspiration for the release was to mark the twenty-year milestone of Williams’ career in music. However, it also feels like a smart celebration of an extraordinary solo career before the artist returns to the band where it all began--Take That, who have been recording a new album with Williams back in the fold.

What Williams does best is to turn his personal life experiences into some of the most celebrated Pop tracks you’re likely to hear. If Robbie Williams had been any other kind of artist, he would have been a lesser man, and if he’d been any other kind of man, he’d have been a lesser artist. As far as the last twenty years are concerned, there are few artists who have so consistently and effortlessly pricked their own consciousnesses to deliver chart-toppers. Sure, he’s doesn’t subscribe to some of the musical territories that some of his haters may attempt, but he’s a Pop act, and as Pop acts go, he truly is one of the most enigmatic, professional, and charismatic presences on stage and on record. His ear for melody is unsurpassed; marry that with his cheeky-chap charms that course through so many lyrics and you have an artist who, for a while, all the women wanted to be with and many men wanted to be. He has passed in and out of the critic’s sense of what’s credible almost as many times as he’s topped the UK charts. Whether the critics considered him cool or not, at varying points through his career, is irrelevant. Williams has only ever been doing it for the kids.

You can’t talk about a Robbie Williams retrospective without addressing the phenomenon of “Angels.” As the story goes, everyone knew a new direction of Brit Pop was about to happen when they first heard that song.  Louise Werner, vocalist for Sleeper, was in the adjoining studio the day Williams finished recording his anthem.  She was called in, by the former Take That star, to hear what he cheekily called “The future of English Music.” Members of guitar bands all took note, since it was true. Gone was the art-school-cool approach, and in its place was a working-class lad making good of his chances, pouring out his heart and singing for every listener regardless of genre or sub-culture identity. There was a new player in town.  “Angels” remained the most played song at weddings and funerals for over a decade.

It’s from being born in Pop and cutting his teeth in Take That that Williams served a very public apprenticeship. Launching a solo career in the wake of an acrimonious split, he did release a couple of ill-advised singles, and there have been occasional slumps in album content.  But it’s the moments of weakness that make the public love him all the more, and it’s in the land of the single where he rules. This is an album of singles, so its artistic continuity and popularity at parties is secured.

In And Out Of Consciousness is a tricky album to surmise.  It represents a twenty-year process in Pop.  As Williams has developed, so he has developed Pop. Whatever the sounds of the day were, so he uses but uses to their limit and brings his own additions to push boundaries, shatter expectations, and keep his listeners on their toes. There’s as much genre-bending and as much confrontation of demons as from any other ‘darker’ artists, but Williams usually knows who he is, and even when he’s not sure of his identity, he’s convinced of his voice. At his most flighty of moments, his feet have remained on the ground, more or less, and it’s that sensibility that keeps him in the heart of his dedicated fan base.

Robbie Williams' success, aside from his natural musicality, lies in part with his cultural awareness.  He knows how to read the times.  He knows, perhaps more than most, given the industry he works in, that everything is in the process of passing--that all we have is now. He seems to encapsulate definition with so much that he does, even when his definitions are a loving, tongue-in-cheek awareness of where he’s from and where he lives now. “No Regrets” could have been a suitable close to proceedings,  but it’s Williams’ genius that “Everything Changes” is the final song on this album’s extensive playlist. The inclusion of one of Take That’s best-loved hits is a humble nod of acknowledgment to where is all began. “Everything changes but you” is the lyric that hangs with new meaning over twenty years later.

For Fans Of: Take That, Justin Timberlake, Kylie Minogue,

Standout Tracks: “Angels,” “Kids,” “Let Me Entertain You,” “Rock DJ,” “She’s The One,” “No Regrets”