The problem for us Brits is that as Anglican lapsed Catholics we still believe we're all Fallen, but we no longer believe that we can be redeemed. Oh yes, now we have to pay lip service to the American religion of success -- thanks very much for that, by the way -- but we don't really believe in it. We may, like much of the rest of the world, be crap-Americans now, but we're agnostic crap-Americans; we still have hundreds of years of feudalism to negotiate. It's why our tabloids, which exist solely to torment our celebrities, frequently with flattery, sell millions every day. It's why our boy Robbie is so "ironic," why he goes on and on and on about His Fame Hell.

For all his transatlantic suckface on this album, I suspect that tabloid-fodder Robbie, who is very crap-American (and also Catholic: "I've slept with girls on the game/ I've got my Catholic shame"), doesn't really believe America can redeem him, either. He's paying lip service, too, though it's not the kind of lip service you might enjoy. (Note: "On the game" is British slang for being a prostitute.)

One of the reasons "Feel" is the best track here is that Robbie doesn't deliberately sabotage the professional songwriting of his (now former) musical collaborator Guy Chambers as he does in practically all the other tracks, penning glib, flip lyrics which would be inoffensive and meaningless in a pop-Muzak kind of way except that they are also teeth-gnashingly, eye-gougingly crass. Robbie's lyrics are hyperactive doggerel that won't lie down, doing anything and everything to draw attention to themselves, including licking their balls and chewing off their own head. "Come Undone," a big James-ish anthemic number, is utterly undone by the vain, self-obsessing lyrics full of mirrors and razor blades: "Such a saint but such a whore/ So self aware, so full of shit / Do another interview/ Sing a bunch of lies/ Tell about celebrities that I despise / I am scum."

This perverted narcissism would be almost admirable in such a crowd-pleasing entertainer if it weren't for the fact that Robbie is apparently singing to his drugs and rape counselor mom (yes, really) again: "Pray that when I'm coming down you'll be asleep / I am scum/ Love, your son." In fact, Robbie gives matriarchy a bad name. Another track, "Nan's Song," is dedicated to his deceased grandmother. This is the first song he's penned entirely himself and he has said, "It's only appropriate that my first song should be about someone I love." In fact, the song is all about how much his Nan loved him.

Once again, the problem with selling this shtick in the U.S. is that few people apart from some aging gay men in San Francisco have heard of Robbie Williams. So how are Americans expected to relate to his problems with his "massive" fame, which is all his songs are about these days? Robbie is Eminem without the hip-hop, without the wit, and without, finally, the (global) success. Robbie tried and failed to crack the American market a few years ago with a compilation album called "The Ego Has Landed" -- which once again appears to be putting the apologetic cart before the career horse, "wittily" referencing a mediocre 1960s British film, "The Eagle Has Landed," that his target teen audience has never heard of. As one American critic's daughter said when Robbie Williams' face popped up on MTV: "Daddy, why is that guy being so goofy?"

In truth, "Escapology" is a kind of 21st century Brit Band Aid album, a "Do They Know It's Christmas in Stoke-on-Trent?" where the needy continent is Robbie's self-esteem (and EMI's bank balance), but where Robbie is impersonating almost every Brit artist who has made it to drive-time radio in the U.S. In "Something Beautiful" he's Marty Pellow of Wet, Wet, Wet, pre-heroin; in "Monsoon" he's post-mustache, pre-AIDS Freddie Mercury (even the tune owes more than a little to "Radio Ga Ga"); "Love Somebody" is pre-wig Elton; "Revolution" is post-Wham, pre-men's-room George Michael (Robbie's first solo single was a cover version of "Freedom"). "Sexed Up" could be Oasis, post-talent. There's some Rod Stewart in here as well, but I can't be bothered to find out where. For good measure, and to show how versatile and deserving of a green card he is, Robbie also throws in some Steve Tyler, some retro-soul and some college radio rawk.

No, I lied. "Escapology" isn't Band Aid. It's an entire season of "American Idol," where Robbie is the only contestant and also plays the part of Simon Cowell. Somehow, though, he manages not to win.

Robbie may be a wanker, and he may be doomed, but he's not an original sinner. Not only is he a karaoke pop performer (his last album, "Swing When You're Winning," was a bunch of covers of Frank Sinatra songs), he's a karaoke human being. After leaving Take That he thought he was Oliver Reed for a while. Then he thought he was Liam Gallagher. Dressed as Frank Sinatra on the cover of "Swing When You're Winning" (which includes a duet with Nicole Kidman on "Somethin' Stupid"), or as James Bond in the video for "Millennium," he looks like an unconvincing if alarmingly hirsute drag king. By the same token, persistent rumors that secretly he's "really gay" miss the point that Robbie isn't really anything.

Where Sinatra was radio, Robbie is a radio. Robbie's voice, although versatile, is strangely constricted, nasal and distant -- as if he has a cheap transistor radio stuck somewhere up his nose. Frankie had a voice that, if radio didn't exist, would have willed it into existence. Robbie has a voice that is merely an echo of broadcasts that dissipated into the ether long before he was born.

On "Escapology," Robbie desperately wants us to believe that he has problems. Perhaps because he thinks this will make him likable. Or interesting. Or human. And perhaps because it will make people forgive or forget the fact that he's a wanker. Actually, Robbie's problem is actually much more serious than his wankerdom, more serious even than being British. Robbie's problem is that he's a ghost. A ghost that has no story of his own, no life to commemorate or haunt, and no point -- other than drawing attention to himself and the pantomime of life that he has become. We're supposed to listen to the clanking chains because they're "really professionally put together" and harken to the moaning because it's "so ironic." Mind you, Robbie's insubstantiality may be the most modern, most sympathetic thing about him. As he sings on "Feel":

Come hold my hand
I wanna contact the living
Not sure I understand
The role I've been given.

Is there an exorcist in the house?

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