Robbie Williams - Live at the Albert

Recently televised on BBC1, Live at the Albert is Robbie Williams' tribute to the swingers. Backed with a full swing band and dancing girls, Robbie smartens up his act with a suit and a smart haircut and croons his way through a wealth of classics. Recorded before the U.K. release of Swing While You're Winning, Robbie Williams's renditions of pop standards on Live at the Albert are at once delightful and disorienting. It's long been known that Williams is enamored of the Rat Pack, and here he lives out an illusion of being one of them. Clearly the jaunty singer is having a ball. The production is impeccable, the chorus girls are beautiful, his voice is in fine form--even his sweat-soaked, cuff-linked shirt hangs on him perfectly. But often Williams's trademark sarcasm and well-documented insecurities overshadow his love of the music. The strangest moment of the show occurs during an intermission, when MC Rupert Everett quizzes the audience on how much they love Robbie Williams. Although delivered with a wink, the stunt is most un-Rat Pack-like. The show as a whole seems like a surreal dream in which Robbie is at once working out his self-doubt and living his fantasy. And on a very conscious level, that is exactly what he is doing. --Beth Massa

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