(Polydor)
There's something almost awe-inspiring and wonderful in how unassailably uncool Gary Barlow – the Just for Men handsome, blandly genial X Factor judge and second most successful Take That alumnus – remains. Sonic reference points for this, his fourth solo album, include on Let Me Go (no please, really, let me go) banjo-virulent arena folk in the exhausted Mumford vein as well as the tritest and most insipid of musical theatre showtunes. And then there's Small Town Girls, sounding like something dredged out of one of Cliff Richard nadirs, oozing and sticky with its own sentimentality and a chorus of "the foundations of the world are built on small town girls".
Rating: 1/5
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