Album reviews: Robbie Williams | The Comet Is Coming

Robbie Williams PIC: Shirlaine Forrest/Getty Images

Robbie Williams: The Christmas Present (Columbia) **

 The Comet Is Coming: The Afterlife (Impulse!) ****

 Paul Vickers & the Leg: Jump (Tenement Records) ****

  Fresh from his debut Las Vegas residency, Robbie Williams releases his first ever Christmas album, and doesn’t go in for half measures in his determination to topple the Michael Bublé monopoly of the market (his alternative title for the album: Achtung Bublé).

 The Christmas Present is a bumper selection box of covers and new festive fare, spread across two albums, Christmas Past and Christmas Future. The former features Williams and guests in big band mode with sleigh bells on, just like his namesake Andy Williams used to do. The latter is an attempt to imagine what a 21st century version of the Andy Williams Christmas specials might sound like with a variety pack of pop numbers.

 It’s not a bad pitch, playing up Williams’ variety and vaudeville tendencies. There are no mouldy tangerines among the traditional tunes – it’s all standard chocolate box fare with input from Jamie Cullum on a swing Merry Christmas Everybody, Bryan Adams on Darlene Love’s Wall-of-Sound classic Christmas (Baby Please Come Home), Rod Stewart on the Celtic-flavoured Fairytales and German star Helene Fischer on Santa Baby (“been singin’ Angels all year”).

 But he spreads himself too thin across 20 original Christmas songs. Like an all-you-can-eat-buffet, what looks like a good deal actually involves a lot of substandard fare.

 Williams appears to have two festive settings – the schmaltzy and the jocular – as demonstrated respectively by Home and Snowflakes, two inoffensive but throwaway songs inspired by his family, the former a soppy string-laden pop ballad about returning from touring, the latter about the conversation at Christmas dinner.

 There are further seemingly autobiographical efforts. Idlewild recalls a wild Christmas courtship, while Darkest Night harks back to the mid-90s (“think I’d just been made redundant,” winks Williams) and a crazy first Christmas as a free agent.

 Elsewhere, it’s a Santa checklist of Christmas cliché. It takes less than a minute for the children’s choir to hit on the unabashed nostalgia of Time for Change, with its acknowledgement of hard times and message of hope for all. Coco’s Christmas Lullaby is a tinsel-wrapped confection for his kids, along with the swirling Carol of the Bells – referencing Rudolph.

 Knees-up Robbie throws himself into the irreverent pub pop of Happy Birthday Jesus Christ (“love that thing you did with the scampi”), the Vegas Elvis pastiche One Last Christmas and Bad Sharon’s portrayal of “a boozy office party somewhere in the Midlands” with bonus barking from boxer Tyson Fury. It’s currently one of the favourites for Christmas Number One, so there may be no escape.

 There is arguably a serious anti-consumerist message behind Let’s Not Go Shopping but it’s hard to tell in Williams’ jovial company if he is entirely serious about anything, not least the avuncular message of the closing Christmas Lullaby Reprise.

 On an entirely non-festive odyssey, cosmic jazz messengers The Comet Is Coming release The Afterlife, a dubby, psychedelic mini-album, intended as a companion to previous release Trust in the Lifeforce of the Deep Mystery.

 Shabaka Hutchings’ virtuosic saxophone is the star attraction, whether soaring with soulful catharsis over the heavy dub bass and percussion of All That Matters is the Moments or in mellow, sonorous mode over the epic, spacey chords of The Seven Planetary Heavens.

 Dawn of the Replicants frontman Paul Vickers, aka Fringe favourite Mr Twonkey, teams up again with Edinburgh outfit The Leg on Jump. These longstanding partners in fabulism create a Beefheart-inspired cacophony of punk strings and throaty testifying on the likes of headlong country thrash Chicken Church and demented nursery rhyme Little Turtle Wars. Meanwhile, Xmas in the Jungle will sadly probably not be playing in a department store near you this festive season. Fiona Shepherd

  CLASSICAL

 Handel: Samson (Linn) *****

 If you don’t know Handel’s Samson, you will know its most famous aria, Let the Bright Seraphim. Sung thrillingly by soprano Mary Bevan in this impressive new Dunedin recording, it is a crowning delight of Handel’s three-act oratorio. But it’s just three minutes’ worth of an otherwise riveting account of the entire work, and one – this is the fascinating bit – that comes with different listening options. There’s the physical CD featuring the expanded choral forces of the Dunedin Consort plus the refreshing youth of the Tiffin Boys’ Choir or you can download a more typical Dunedin version featuring Dunedin members only as the chorus. Either way, this is another John Butt spectacular, the ensemble’s effervescent director eliciting a performance that captures the emotion of Handel’s exceptional writing: the eloquent forcefulness of Joshua Ellicot’s Samson, Sophie Bevan’s absorbing Dalila, and other characterful soloists besides. Ken Walton

  JAZZ

 Ben Bryden : Figure of Eight (Circavision Productions) ****

 Dumfries-born, New York domiciled saxophonist Ben Bryden marks his tenth anniversary in the Big Apple in the tightly empathetic company of guitarist Phil Robson, bassist Desmond White and drummer Raj Jayaweera, creating what he describes as “palindromic story arc” evoking the shifting pull of his old and new worlds. The result is highly engaging, often lyrical jazz, ranging from the plaintive tenor sax voices – his and guest Steven Delannoye’s – waltzing easefully through Goodbye Lullaby to the gutsy rock of The Art of Fielding. The only cover, Billy Joel’s She’s Always a Woman, slopes along elegantly over Robson’s chording, while an impressive highlight is Scarista, its stately theme calling over elemental-sounding looping. Then, following the urban drive, bustling sax and gritty guitar of A Respectful Salute to the Socially Relevant, up pops the heartfelt yearning of Flow Gently, Sweet Afton, reaffirming the pull of the old country. Jim Gilchrist

Album reviews: Robbie Williams | The Comet Is Coming | Paul Vickers & the Leg