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Your support makes all the difference.Besides losing two members, on III Take That have sadly also mislaid the re-energised sense of new direction that marked 2010's Progress.
Most songs here sound like capitulations to overworked clichés - the vaunting Coldplay-esque anthem "Freeze", the chugging Keane-like keyboards of "Portrait", the Calvin Harris-style house stomper "Let In The Sun", Gary Barlow's McCartney pastiche "Amazing" - but they're so awash in vacuous feelgood bluster they make the album the pop equivalent of a hot-air balloon.
There's so little imagination: "If You Want It" ("...come and get it", etc) utterly lacks the sly wit of the Badfinger song on the same theme - it's as if they simply couldn't conceive of satirising consumerism, so slavishly do they serve market forces.
By default, the best tracks are "I Like It", which brings a striding Glitterband swagger to electro-stomp style, and "Flaws", which has an idiosyncratic charm lacking in the rest of the album.
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