POP/ROCK

The latest releases reviewed.

ROBBIE WILLIAMS
Rudebox
EMI
***

For years Robbie Williams has been caught between the pushpull of stadium-filling clout and critical kudos. The former he has in spades, the latter he desperately craves, and grabs for it on his ninth album with a triple-pronged approach: a press blurb that cites impeccable references like Kraftwerk (The Actor), The Happy Mondays (Keep On) and Prince; covers of Manu Chao, Human League and Stephen "Tin Tin" Duffy; and guest production by The Pet Shop Boys and William Orbit. The result is a chunky 75 minutes of wideboy narratives that rip through genres like a hyperactive child (no coincidence perhaps?). When Robbie's not mimicking Mike Skinner, there's edgy pop aplenty: Summertime, a brilliant cover of Louise, and 90s, the latter a heartfelt account of an up-and-down decade. Robbie, you don't have to convince us you're talented. Just stop trying so damn hard. www.robbiewilliams.com     Sinéad Gleeson

ISOBEL CAMPBELL
Milk White Sheets
V2
***

Before her Mercury Prize-nominated album Ballad of the Broken Seas, Campbell was viewed as little more than a Belle & Sebastian apparatchik. Enter collaborator Mark Lanegan, and Campbell is suddenly a writer and interpreter of depth and well-honed country bite. Solo again, she has turned away from the Lee Hazlewood/ Nancy Sinatra shtick she readily embraced with Lanegan, and looked instead to Britain and Ireland's folk traditions. In places, on this collection of songs old and new, there is some of the lightness of Joanna Newsom. But time spent with Lanegan has left a shadow, and so there is a melancholy edge to tracks such as the standard, O Love Is Teasin', and Are You Going to Leave Me? An intimate, sparse record with touches of malice, but without Lanegan's lacerating growl it doesn't quite shiver the timbers. www.isobelcampbell.com      Paul McNamee

MEAT LOAF
Bat out of Hell III - The Monster Is Loose
Mercury
**

Portentous, overblown, over-produced, bluster rock and ballad lite, operatic, Wagnerian, ridiculous - and those are the good bits. Meat Loaf returns with the third album bearing the Bat Out of Hell trademark, and it's as obvious as you might well think it would be. It's also pieced together like crazy paving: original collaborator Jim Steinman contributes to seven of the 14 songs, yet none were written specifically for the record (indeed, Bad for Good is a reworking of the title track from Steinman's 1981 solo album). The music teeters between propulsive nu-metal, hysterical stadia-straddling rock and signature radio-friendly male/ female ballads, as Mr Loaf tries in vain to string together some kind of theme. While you have to applaud Loaf's brazen sense of ambition, you must also question the kind of logic that underpins such an undertaking. Bats, of course, totally bats. Tony Clayton-Lea

THE DATSUNS
Smoke and Mirrors
V2
**

Time waits for no man, but these hard rock revivalists refuse to budge for it. Four years ago, when The Datsuns emerged with a heaving excess of '70s-derived bombast, it felt like a good joke made with a straight face. Three albums later and the New Zealand band now seem worryingly serious about their careful pastiche, still tethered to florid riffs, dull thuds and lyrical shrieks. Indebted to Led Zeppelin and AC/DC, this strange combination of musical urgency and stylistic stagnation leads to an inevitable feeling that we're going nowhere fast. At least there's some fun in the pummelling What Are You Stamping Your Foot For? and the open-throttle riff-a-thon of Maximum Heartbreak. Everywhere else the vintage effects are beginning to mildew, and with the sprawling self-importance of Too Little Fire, The Datsuns seem to admit it. Maybe, at last, it's time to move on. www.thedatsuns.com       Peter Crawley

ROYSEVEN
The Art of Insincerity
Universal
**

Formerly trading under the name Jove, this Irish six-piece cite such influences as The Doors, Led Zep and The Beatles, but fail to mention their more evident affinity with the likes of Coldplay, Starsailor, Muse and Radiohead. Their epic, emotional - and by now redundant - brand of blowsy rock is centred around the showy vocals of Clonmel man Paul Walsh, whose rounded, over-the-top operatics dominate such tracks as Older, Happy Ever Afters, Crash, In Your Bedroom, Revenge in Blue and Send Me to Hell. Walsh belongs to an all-too-familiar rock species: the handsome, sensitive frontman whose heart has been broken by a cruel, vicious woman, forcing him to undergo a particularly harrowing bout of recording studio therapy (in this case, Grouse Lodge in Co Westmeath). At least with Muse you could enjoy the camp, apocalyptic sci-fi imagery, but The Art of Insincerity has just one storyline, and Walsh plays it like a leather-clad King Lear crying into his designer beer. If Royseven tried harder to be a band rather than just a vehicle for Walsh's wounded wailing, they might have impressed. www.royseven.com       Kevin Courtney

HOT CLUB DE PARIS
Drop It 'Till It Pops
Moshi Moshi Records
**

How far should you trust a band whose name is a ruse? This Liverpudlian trio's desire to wrong foot us also infuses their sound, a musical spasm of fidgety time signatures and noodly guitar work, where no song is complete without a sudden lurch, a quick blurt, a stop, a start - not necessarily in that order. If The Futureheads weren't already doing something similar with equally unapologetic regional accents and considerably more warmth, Hot Club de Paris might feel like a going concern. As it is, the sudden power surges and abrupt short circuits of their debut become as annoyingly self-conscious as their song titles. Sometimesitsbetternottostickbitsofeachotherineachotherforeachother is a less than honourable exception, but ultimately the clever-clever formula of math-rock only serves to bring down their heat. Peter Crawley

TILLY AND THE WALL
Bottoms of Barrels
Moshi Moshi
***

That clacking sound you hear is tap dancer Jamie Williams, tirelessly stomping out the rhythms for this Omaha, Nebraska band's second full-length album, a follow-up to last year's Wild Like Children. Lined up alongside her, like back-porch psychobillies, are singers/strummers Kianna Alarid, Neely Jenkins and Derek Pressnall, and organ/piano player Nick White. They count Conor Oberst and Jenny Lewis among their friends, and deftly straddle both the indie and country sides of the Americana faultline. Unlike their more skewed peers, however, Tilly and the Wall look at the world through a child's dreaming eyes (they're even named after a children's story), which brings a sense of wonder to such songs as Lost Girls, Love Song and Sing Songs Along. But though their outlook is dangerously upbeat, there are, reassuringly, enough childhood nightmares lurking within the lyrics to keep things from getting too happy-clappy. www.tillyandthewall.com      Kevin Courtney