Gareth - 3/22/2011

Take that's 3rd album since reuniting and their first with all five original member including Robbie Williams who appears to defiantly take centre stage on this album. This may be a good or a bad thing depending on your feeling towards Robbie. An eye catcher from the off with its bright yellow and red front cover art work. Once you start to listen, this album is a full on assault of the sensors. The music and backing on the album sounds far more electronic and up beat than previous Take That releases, which makes it sound contemporary yet in places crosses that fine line between contemporary and retro parody and in places somehow seems to emulate an 80's electro pop sound found on an Erasure album. pastiche
For most of the album there seems to be in place, a pulsating beat driving it forwards as though marching, striving and reaching forward 'progress.
The opening song 'The Flood' starts slowly but quickly builds, introducing the beat with main vocals from Robbie and Gary. This then continues straight into 'SOS' with Mark taking on lead vocal duty along with Robbie. The songs 'Wait', 'Pretty Things' and 'Eight Letters' are the slower songs on the album and are more in the way of what you would have previously expected from the lads. Many songs seem to cover the subjects of unity, re uniting, growing in moving forward, and regret of the past and in things that were not said and done before.
Howard contributes lead vocal to the song 'Affirmation', with Jason singing the bonus track tagged on the end of the album after 'Eight Letters' finishes. Mark sings a song called 'What Do you want From Me?', which seems as though it should be a personal discussion to be had between him and his wife, obviously written after the outing of marks love life in the press during the making of this album. None the less, a strong vocal performance and an attempt to be positive in putting things right.
A very good album from start to finish, although I would say, with the dominant feature of Robbie Williams and his obvious input into the production of the album, it does sound far closer to a Robbie Williams solo album of recent years, than in does a Take That release. With the recent speculation that Robbie Williams may again be leaving Take That to pursue his solo career, you have to wonder if this was a poorly thought out decision by Gary and the rest of the lads, to have ever invited Robbie back into the fold. Gary has also recently stated that he has always seen the future for Take That as a four piece. Although its apparent that the Take That machine is big enough at this point in its career to easily move past this second Robbie era without too much trouble, you have to wonder, has this brief 5 piece reunion (if that's what it proves to be) left Take That, the four piece with an album they will struggle to be able to continue playing live in years to come due to the all to strong presence of Robbie Williams on a majority of the tracks.