2006’s ‘Beautiful World’ album saw the return of one of the biggest UK pop bands of all time after a ten year hiatus sans Robbie Williams, too busy bothering pies and thinking he’s an alien. The renaissance of the ex fat one, the two dancers and the little ‘un was impressive to say the least, as album sales and flying off the shelf gig tickets proved.

‘The Circus’, their fifth album continues where ‘Beautiful world’ left off but with extra American radio sheen, there’s the fast ones that sound like ELO and The Beatles or the overly emotional slow ballads with epic gusto beyond the call of duty, you can even feel the furrowed brows on the violin laced ‘Said it all’.

Despite Gary Barlow’s prowess with a pop tune, it’s the odd vocal impediment of Mark Owen, Take That’s answer to Norman Wisdom which dominate the album. The Owen led cosiness of ‘Julie’ could be mistaken for Radio Two fodder such as The Script, whilst ‘Hello’ is ‘Shine’ Pt 2 where Take That even get political, yeah, they KNOW stuff with Owen failing lyrically on the credit crisis by lisping ‘Looks like the cost of houses is falling, but I don’t notice’.

There are other heroically bad lyrics on one of the best tracks, the Keane/Coldplay like bluster of “How did it come to this?”. Ringo’s (Jason to his mum) first ever lead vocal auto-tuned beyond recognition, name dropping unpoplike words such as neurotic, OCD and schizophrenic and in a bizarre work life balance inspired lyric he moans ‘It’s just my way of compartmentalising all the things I see”.

The title track is a dreamy pastiche of 70’s soft rock and The Beatles in their ‘All You need is love’ era psychedelic pomp, with Barlow swooning during the chorus “Everybody loves a circus show but I’m the only clown you’ll ever know”, this and the heavily Beach Boys influenced ballad ‘You’ with Barlow at his crooning best will guarantee there won’t be a dry knicker in the house.

Should I do a comment about them being ‘back for good’ now like everyone else?

Chris Todd
6/10