Excellent reviews all around it appears, although the DM did give some songs lowish scores - and they are dead wrong with regard to both SOS and Underground Machine.

 

http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2010/11/12/article-1328974-0C07D318000005DC-403_306x326_popup.jpg

http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2010/11/12/article-1328974-0C07D450000005DC-44_306x824.jpg

Edited November 12, 201014 yr by De Niro

I would have never thought TT (or even Robbie solo) would get such critics and reviews overall... What's coming next? A 100/100 billboard rating? :huh: :lol:

Another good review:

 

http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertai...or-2132247.html

 

It looks like they finally have a chance to win Best Album at Brit Awards next year.

Album Reviews > Take That - ‘Progress’ .

 

 

Take That - ‘Progress’

 

Posted Fri 12 Nov 2010 15:09 GMT by Dan Gennoe in Album Reviews

So inevitable was the return of Robbie Williams to Take That that the news, when it finally came, was something of an anticlimax. With his solo career stalling just as the boyband he'd left for dead a decade earlier reclaimed their place as Britain's biggest pop act, it didn't take a cynic to predict where the reversal of fortunes would lead.

 

The issue was never would Robbie return, but what they would do with him when he did. Was there really room in the cosily reformed group for a dysfunctional egomaniac? Could he ever play nicely as part of a band again? It may be a reunion, but the story of Take That's third post-comeback album, their first as a five piece since 1995, is, inevitably, all about Robbie Williams.

 

If Williams and Barlow's twee, burying the hatchet duet, ‘Shame', suggested Robbie might actually fit quite nicely into the new M&S friendly Take That, ‘Progress' suggests a cataclysmic event which has all but destroyed the comfy middle-aged vision of niceness which the foursome's resurrection was built on. Forget ‘Patience''s tender acoustic guitars and ‘Greatest Day''s soaring strings. ‘Progress' is all grinding electro, dark synth-pop and mental lyrics about serpents, narcissism and mobile phones.

 

Produced by keyboard obsessive and Madonna/Kylie/Scissor Sisters collaborator Stuart Price, the album's an excitable, chaotic mass of bleeps and clicks, thuds and drama. The simpering balladry is restricted to just one song, the Gary sang ‘Eight Letters', and the only hint of post-comeback Take That's trademark grandiose pomp is opener ‘The Flood', which starts the album as it means to go on, with the spotlight firmly on Robbie.

 

‘SOS' and ‘Kidz' have Robbie and Mark Owen rambling pseudo-political psychobabble over manic electro-rock and are as brilliant as they are bizarre. The Robbie led ‘Wait' lays beautifully melancholic piano over body popping beats. The snarling, self-obsessed ‘Underground Machine' is another Robbie winner, while ‘Pretty Things' and ‘Happy Now' have Gary and Robbie sharing the lead over a hushed lullaby and brooding euro-dance - although spotting Gary amid all the Robbie isn't easy.

 

And therein lies ‘Progress''s only flaw. It is, literally, all about Robbie Williams. His vocals dominant seven out of ten tracks, the keyboard heavy makeover has little to do with Take That and everything to do with his last three solo albums, and while the reunion has clearly done him the world of good, it doesn't seem like a fair and equal exchange. He got the best Robbie Williams album in years, they got to do the backing vocals. Epic, exciting, strange and unexpected, it's exactly what pop needed, but surely not quite what Gary Barlow had in mind.

 

8/10

 

 

http://new.uk.music.yahoo.com/blogs/albumr...e-thatprogress/

Edited November 12, 201014 yr by Cleo

From

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/music/c...-CD-review.html

 

 

Take That: Progress, CD review

Out go the ballads, in come sci-fi Europop techno stomps in Take That's 'Progress'. Rating: * * *

 

The boys are back: but Take That have taken a new musical direction

By Neil McCormick 5:21PM GMT 12 Nov 2010

 

 

 

Be careful what you wish for. Take That fans hankering for reconciliation between the revived man band and their prodigal brother Robbie Williams may be taken aback by the musical direction they have taken.

 

Out go the Coldplay-style ballads. In come sci-fi Europop techno stomps with cut-up lyrics and visions of dystopian social apocalypse. Or something like that.

 

One and a half million tickets for Take That’s 2011 tour sold out in 24 hours, but I wonder what purchasers will think if the band take to the stage with Kidz. It starts with the crunch of marching jackboots, morphs into polemical, robotic disco and has little Mark Owen making grand pronouncements about monkeys building machines in his nasally northern chirp, before Williams kicks in with a chorus threatening revolution: “There’ll be trouble when the kids come out!” It all ends with massed chanted “La la las” delivered with the gusto of high-kicking Cossacks. It’s a long way from Patience.

 

From top to bottom, the album is utterly bonkers. Williams has long been a kind of bipolar pop star, somehow blending commercial mass appeal with an instinct for provocation, and he seems to have infused his band mates with his very peculiar sense of fun. Gary, Mark, Jason and Howard have all unleashed their inner Robbie. But, be warned, it is not the Williams of Angels and Let Me Entertain You, it’s the maverick maniac of the derided Rudebox.

 

Amid cascades of boing-ing, bleeping and banging synths, techno beats, sirens, loops and anything else they and co-producer Stuart Price (Madonna, the Killers) could throw in, Take That genuinely sound like they are having fun. Even the usually restrained Barlow gets in on the nonsense, declaring: “I’m a supersonic specimen/A minor miracle of medicine” on Happy Now, which conjures up the Eighties electro of the Human League, channelled through the stadium rock dynamics of Achtung Baby-era U2.

 

Yes, it really is that mad. It is the first Take That album I have actually enjoyed listening to, but then I’m not exactly their target audience. They should be applauded for daring to deliver a laugh out loud, big, brash, electro stadium epic, but by the time Owen shouts out: “I just want to have sex with you!” in the excruciatingly frank What Do You Want From Me?, you wonder if they have all been egging each other on just a little too much.

 

This is either a stroke of pop genius or a musical midlife crisis.

 

Download this: Kidz

 

 

 

From

http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/entertai...r-15002579.html

 

 

Take That, Progress (Polydor)

 

(Rated 4/ 5 )

 

By Andy Gill

Friday, 12 November 2010

 

 

Those who imagined Take That's reunion album would be a predictable blending of forces will be shocked to hear Progress.

 

Rather than pop balladry, the album leans heavily on electronic beats and textures, and reflects misgivings about science and humanity. The robotic tint to vocals on tracks such as "Wait", "SOS" and "Kidz" hints at discomfiture with society, while the techno stomper "Under-ground Machine" reveals a dystopian take on boy-meets-girl. It's not all grim portents, though: "Eight Letters" is a gilt-edged Barlow romantic finale, while "Pretty Things", with courtly harpsichord and string tones, offers an engaging take on 60s madrigal-pop.

 

DOWNLOAD THESE: SOS; Kidz; Pretty Things; Eight Letters; Underground Machine

 

 

 

From

http://www.mirror.co.uk/celebs/music/2010/...15875-22710550/

 

 

Take That - Progress album review: Five come alive again

 

By Gavin Martin 12/11/2010

 

 

 

With the launch of their sixth studio album - rush-released to appease public demand and beat young pretenders JLS to the shops by a week - Take That are on a high, consolidated by the return of prodigal absconder Robbie Williams.

 

Producer Stuart Price (Madonna, Killers) is the perfect choice here, mixing risque sonics with plenty of razzle and stomp. SOS is the storm after the calm of opening lead single The Flood and signals the mood of playful panic that underscores the album.

 

It contemplates the apocalypse and sundry disasters in a hyperventilating operetta, several light years away from anything you'd have found on their 1992 Take That & Party debut.

 

More shocks to the system follow. Kidz warns "Kings and queens and presidents/ Ministers of governments...." of the impending wrath of youth.

 

 

 

On an album which is the first featuring the composing talents of all five TT men, this sounds like the revenge of Mark Owen. His socially concerned solo albums may have sunk without trace, but now he has his gang with him.

 

The Robbie Williams effect looms large on Happy Now, a slyly ironic, creepy song where the lead vocalist claims to be "A supersonic specimen/ A minor miracle of medicine".

 

The heavy duty Underground Machine has the feel of a galumphing robot at a metal disco, cast in the slipstream of Rock DJ. With its bolshy, male stripper beat and see-sawing chorus, it's set to become a big live favourite.

 

Take That's comeback has not only accommodated but been strengthened by Williams' return. Its one notable misfire, What Do You Want From Me? is quickly covered by the polite finale Eight Letters.

 

They've pushed the envelope while playing to their core audience, who will love them even more. That must be why it's called Progress.

 

 

 

From

http://uk.real.com/music/blog/?id=4016&amp...Progress_Review

 

 

 

Take That - Progress Review

Posted on 2010-11-10 17:13:39 by clydon

 

Since Robbie returned to the Take That fold, the hoopla surrounding the now fab five has spiralled further into the dizzying distance with every passing day. They thought The Circus tour was big, but Progress broke all records, selling ten squillion tickets in three minutes flat. And the Progress album is deemed too gold to be sent out to journalists – instead, we have to troop to offices for listening sessions under the watchful eye of smiling PRs. Things ain’t like they used to be. But then again, maybe that’s because Take That, judging from this album, ain’t what they used to be either. The Circus was a polite album, full of knees-up choruses and Barlow balladry. This time round though, with Robbie on-board, Take That have taken a giant leap into the unknown, embracing electronic wizardry, meandering lyrics, military drumbeats and chiselled production…

 

So the question is, have Take That gone crazy? I don’t think so. But prepare yourself – The Flood was just a tease and this album sounds nothing like The Circus or Beautiful World. This is, if you like, Take That’s Rudebox, only with Gary’s innate sense of melody to reign things in so that it never veers off into the murky beyond in quite the way Robbie did. On the plus side though, this album is also a huge pile of fun, which certainly cannot have been said about The Circus.

 

It kicks off with The Flood which will have doused your radio dial liberally over the past few weeks. So far, so Robbie’s comeback single with Gary stepping chivalrously aside. The next track though – SOS - mashes its industrial drums, layered guitars and punchy, political vibe into your face until you cry out for mercy. It’s like TT are set on working till they’re musclebound (all night long). It also has Mark on lead vocals – Shine has so much to answer for. SOS sets the tone for the rest of the album – dark, barmy, edgy. A surefire single then, with other contenders being Kidz, Happy Now and Eight Letters.

 

Kidz again has Mark shredding the verses, with Robbie saving things with a hard-as-nails chorus which was still pinging around my brain when I woke up this morning. Think police sirens, heavy beats and Robbie savagely slurring: “There will be trouble when the kids come out!” It only takes a minute for this glam-rock opus to become an earworm.

 

The downside of Progress is that you have to get to track six – track six! – for Gary to have a lead vocal. Happy Now sounds like the love child of Ziggy Stardust and the Pet Shop Boys. “Super-heavy elements embrace me,” chirrups Gary, lost amid a sea of electronics. Really, when has Gary ever sung anything like that? A Million Love Songs it ain’t. He saves that till the end with a pure Barlow-penned Take That track Eight Letters – “Eight letters, three words, one meaning,” croons Gary from his piano stool and suddenly we’re back in lighters-in-the-air, safe TT territory. If feels such a relief. In between times, there’s space for Mark to squawk about his failed marraige on What Do You Want From Me? (to shut up is the obvious answer); and Howard and Jason get a song each with Affirmation and a hidden track.

 

This album was written by the Take That collective over the past year, but it reeks of Robbie and is so over-produced that you sometimes struggle to make out who’s singing what. However, we shouldn’t rough up TT for striving to take a different path. They are, after all, a changed band now – a quintet with new dynamics to embrace and this is the result. For not trotting out another Circus, we salute them. I’m just not sure that all the mums who bought their tour tickets will be excited about hearing this one live.

Thanks for all the reviews - I will read them in full later. I did real Neil's review though and enjoyed his summing up of the album. As he says he is not TT's target audiences but enjoyed the album due to the change of direction - I am the same. The album is very enjoyable, especially SOS, Kidz and Underground Machine :D Also enjoying Happy Now and Pretty Things - and to a lesser extent 'Wait' :D

Stop copying my favourite songs :angry:

Oh I can't stand What Do You Want From Me :lol: It's so painful to listen to :blush:

 

Love Eight Letters :wub: Wish Robbie was singing it :heart:

I intend to do my full review this weekend :smoke:

I must say I like each and every song :shy: and especially Eight letters :wub: but for some strange reason I can't stand Pretty things :blink: :rofl: :rofl: really can't explain why :lol: I mean it's a nice song and everything but I just can't stand it :lol: :teresa:

I like it :wub:

 

 

It's very good for sending you off to sleep if you are troubled by insomnia. Seriously, it is. :lol:

Hmmm....I'm troubled by it from time to time...like tonight :lol: I should give it a try :lol:

I'm telling you. Earphones on. Dark room. Pretty Things. :zzz:

I'm telling you. Earphones on. Dark room. Pretty Things. :zzz:

 

 

I'll try :lol: But watch out if that doesn't work :P

On amazon.de the album gets many negative reviews. overall rating is 3/5 stars so far! Many people thought TT would follow their previous album's direction. I still have to write my 5/5 review there.

HOT PRESS - ALBUM REVIEWS

 

TAKE THAT PROGRESS ***

 

 

DECENT RETURN FROM THE REUNITED POP ICONS

 

With the return of the prodigal son - otherwise known as Robbie Williams - to the Take That fold being compared to the second coming, their first album as a quintet in over a dozen years was always going to be a pivotel moment in the boyband's 20 year career. It's certainly a lot different from anything they've previously attempted and - as a result - fpr those who lapped up the Beatles-eqsue pop choruses on Circus, progress might prove something of a challenge.

 

In fact, it sounds a lot like a recent Robbie Williams album ( Rudebox anyone !! ) , produced as it is to withing an inch of it's life by electro master Stuart Price . Every tune here is constructed . layered & processed , with little sense of organice songwriting at play. Thus, while many have already hailed it as a daring , ambitious and , ummm ' , progressive sounding record, it sounds to me more like a clever , well put together blend of Euro-disco grooves and arena rock textures , with a nod to Scissor Sisters glam ( Happy Now ) and even some Gorillaz -style experimentalism.

 

No matter, the single The Flood with it's compelling chorus, has already proved the enduring appeal of the fab five and Williams takes the lead vocal on several other highlights here, including the catchy KIDZ and the Pet Shop Boys influenced 'Underground Machine' where he declares unashamedly "Your'e in the room with a rock star / What a Beast , What a Man "

 

Elsewhere Williams duets with Gary Barlow on Pretty Things, which workd quite brilliantly , while Barlow himself takes the lead on another highlight, album closer Eight Letters, one of the few ballads on a surprisingly upbeat record.

 

As Eamonn Dunphy might say ' A good record, but not a great one ..

 

Source...Hot Press...Colm O Hare

Edited November 30, 201014 yr by Cleo

Take That – Progress (Album Review)

 

 

If in the year 3000 the musical historians and documenters of popular culture were to cover the period of Rock n Roll mythology circa 1960 to 2010 they would have many great artists and bands to feature and many great tales of excess to tell. From the drug induced deaths of Hendrix and Keith Moon to the sexual adventures of Jim Morrison. From Syd Barrett’s acid meltdown into hermetic lifestyle, Kurt Cobains failure to deal with the fame we all aspire to and subsequent suicide. Inter band squabbling and rivalries also provide great copy from the twin ego’s of Lennon and McCartney or Morrissey and Marr and the actual sibling rivalry of a band like Oasis. One band that the future generation probably wouldn’t touch upon is Take That, yet on the release of the years biggest album to date its time to take stock and realise that the journey they have taken from boys to men is an amazing story to rival any of the iconic figures of the past fifty years.

 

“Progress” is a great great record, and adult Rock/Pop album in the mould of U2 or Muse and with the glitter stomp swagger of T-Rex infused with the 80’s electro styling’s of artists like The Human League or The Pet Shop Boys. It’s an album that references it’s own story and is as far removed from the boy band they once were or the clichéd remarks about Ford Mondeo drivers people who haven’t heard the album like to band about.

 

Lets not forget Take That were five strangers, nay five teenagers who had never met before 1990 thrown together as a manufactured pop band and marketed at the gay clubs of Manchester, they were kids who made music for kids, in 2010 they are men who make albums for adults to love two entirely different bands and to judge the band on their past is to miss the point entirely. The fact the latter Take That exists is in itself a remarkable achievement in itself but look closer at the story and it’s even more so.

 

From 1992 to 1996 Take That were a genuine phenomenon, with a hysterical fan base the equivalent of Beatlemania, maybe more so as when they split their fans had to be consoled by specially set up hotlines. By this point they were a four piece having ousted Robbie Williams by mutual misunderstanding, Robbie was hanging with Oasis and Gary Barlow was almost dictorial in his ruling of the band. Williams then took ultimate revenge by becoming the UK’s biggest pop star whilst Barlow’s own solo career descended into an embarrassing joke. There was pure hatred and rivalry between the two of them played out in public that made the sibling squabbling of the Gallagher brothers look like two spoilt children in the playground and Robbie was clearly the ultimate victor over his former band.

 

Then in 2006 rising like a Phoenix from the flames Take That came back minus Robbie to once again become one of the UK’s biggest Pop acts winning Brit Awards and Ivor Novello’s along the way and their best ever song “The Greatest Day” sound tracking just about every reality TV show and sporting event you could name. Meanwhile Robbie’s own solo career had gone into a downward spiral, the “Rudebox” album of 2006 was a commercial flop and 2009’s “Reality Killed The Video Star” was a half hearted will this do type of album. He’d also had enough of the public eye becoming a virtual recluse and having suffered major solvent abuse problems and manic depression/mental breakdowns, a Rock n Roll meltdown to rival Keith Moon whilst at the same time being perceived as an ego maniac and playing to the cameras whilst inside slowly breaking.

 

It’s now remarkable and beneficial to both Take That and Robbie that Barlow and Williams sat in a room together and kissed and made up like the grown men they now are. Theirs is in many ways a genuine love story of two close friends that had issues with each other. If the Gallagher brothers had shown this level of maturity the world wouldn’t have to had suffer the monstrosity that is the Beady Eye single. Take That need Robbie Williams and Robbie Williams needs Take That, it’s as simple as that.

And the album they have made together is an energetic celebration of all things that have gone before and all things that might still be.

 

From the grandiose stadium rock of “The Flood” to the heartfelt almost ballad that is “Eight Letters” that is the story of Take That itself, this is a genuinely brilliant record. “SOS” sounds like The Killers if Brandon Flowers allowed himself sunny delight instead of naval gazing introspection. “Pretty Things” recalls The Human League with it’s Casio keyboard intro and softly delivered vocal from Williams. Mark Owen deals with his own demons on two tracks the Muse like “Kidz” and an open letter to his wife to forgive his recent intercessions on “What Do You Want From Me”.

 

“Underground Machine” sees everyone trading vocals to a disco stomper that sounds like Dead or Alive’s 1985 #1 hit “You Spin Me Round”. Howard Donald takes lead vocals on “Affirmation” to remind the listener that all this isn’t just about Robbie and Gary but in truth it really is. And that’s a fact underlined by Take That’s greatest moment, and in keeping with the remarkable story that is this journey the best track on the album isn’t even credited, its hidden away 25 seconds after “Eight Letters” supposedly closes the album.

 

“Flowerbed” if played to an unsuspecting listener doesn’t sound like any song Take That have ever released, its got an Elbow like intro if Elbow were in fact influenced by avant garde composers like Phillip Glass or Vangelis before a dreamlike vocal laments the bands story in Brokeback Mountain fashion but without sounding trite at all. The haunting backing track reminds of “Life In A Northern Town” by Dream Academy and that fact is drilled home when the closing echoes of the song end like The Beatles “ a day in the life”, it’s a genuinely moving song that illustrates the confidence Take That now hold by tucking it away hidden as a treasure locket for the fans to discover.

 

To Quote a lyric from the album “Eight letters, three words one meaning”, well that’s I love You, and its also “Progress”. Put the two together and you have one of the best comeback records of all time.

 

Rating: ****

 

 

Source...misformusic.com