CD: Gary Barlow - Since I Saw You Last

Like his sometime nemesis Robbie Williams it’s all too easy to dismiss Gary Barlow as lame mainstream tosh. In fact, that’s not such a bad idea. Let’s do that. Job done.

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Like his sometime nemesis Robbie Williams it’s all too easy to dismiss Gary Barlow as lame mainstream tosh. This is especially the case if you were male and young in the Nineties for then you’ll have borne the Take That-mania of hormone-addled female peers (as well as the crappy disco-pop that accompanied it). Nowadays Barlow’s media presence is ubiquitous, irritatingly humble, likeable even, albeit thoroughly bland. Weirdly, so a recent poll by a mattress company told the world, he’s the man most women would like to share a bed with, somehow beating Ryan Gosling into second place. None of this makes it easy to take an unbiased approach to his music.

However, forget his public profile for a moment. Listen to his album alongside a current hit pop album, say Katy Perry’s latest, and suddenly his song-writing seems elegantly crafted, his production spacious. Unfortunately it’s also unrelentingly wet. With Take That’s Stuart Price-produced 2010 album Progress, Barlow and co. proved they could deliver pop that was modern, adult, and engaging. Since I Saw You Last is much more middle-aged and middle-of-the-road. Even better numbers, such as the likeable strummed country chug of “Let Me Go” have had their character polished away.

Barlow knows his way round a tune but lathers everything in too much perky good cheer (the opening church organ-laced “Requiem”) or tragedian levels of woe (the forlorn piano ballad “Dying Inside”), all with irritating and very 21^st-century self-help/empowerment lyrical tics. Alongside some stinky rhymes (“tragic”/”Titanic”) and an autopilot duet with Elton John, his latest set of songs display an interest in religion, especially on “God”, although he doesn’t appear to be proselytising. There is something of Paul McCartney about Barlow's work and persona, the niceness and smiley opaque frontage, but this album shows none of McCartney's occasional sense of adventure and is the worse for it.

Watch the video "Let Me Go"