Robbie Williams: Intensive Care

Herald rating: * * *

You have to wonder what will happen to Robbie's career if he ever falls in love - with anyone other than himself. Will the fans who fantasised about rescuing him from his achy-breaky angst keep buying his albums?

There's something endearing about this bed-hopping bandit who can't commit because he doesn't seem to know how.

Intensive Care continues to revel in his screwiness in all senses of the word, with Williams complaining he's as sexed and flummoxed as ever and that even he can't explain his own rotten behaviour. A convincing argument.

This time he's without long-time co-writer Guy Chambers. If his absence proves anything it's that Robbie still sounds like Robbie. In Chambers' place is Stephen Duffy, singer from 80s folk-rock band Lilac Time, a successful collaboration most apparent on the Smiths-influenced The Trouble With Me and Your Gay Friend. Perhaps he's to blame for putting a virtual orchestra behind most tracks, and for the overblown 70s rock arrangements on A Place to Crash. Even a big star like Robbie can get squashed by all the extras, y'know.

Elsewhere there are few tweaks to the Robbie formula. Make Me Pure is this album's Better Man, a classic, lighter-waving confessional over twanging country guitars and gospel singers - the track they'll play if he ever kicks the bucket. And we might as well reserve a No 1 spot for the album's big ballad moment, Advertising Space, with its inventive Marlon Brando narrative.

If Robbie had taken as many chances musically as he did with like the fantastic first single, Tripping - a cosmic combo of falsetto vocal, ska guitar and Bollywood strings - Intensive Care wouldn't slip into generic, everyman pop-rock so often.

But fans will be stoked that even though the album peters out to dramatic ambient synths, our beloved entertainer hasn't really grown up, as the opening line attests: "Here I stand, victorious, the only man who made you come." Let's hope he falls in love soon.