On his latest album Reality Killed the Video Star, Williams is at pains to point out that this is not a comeback - but how can it be anything but? Much of the album feels like a post-mortem - of his much glorified career, past relationships (both personal and professional) while taking stock of the mess left behind once the party is over. Williams is really too young to be feeling this jaded, but then he has been doing as much hard living as he could squeeze into the last two decades.

The message from the first track on Reality Killed the Video Star is that Williams is done trying to entertain you - or at least in the way you've come to expect him to. That album title is a dead giveaway. He sums it up on "You Know Me": I've been doing what I like/when I like, how I like/It's joyless". Yikes. Trevor Horn's sophisticated production work also lend the album a certain cloying maturity that sap all the fun out of the Williams of old, but he's clearly left that man behind somewhere in the dusty plains of his youth - wistfully recalling the glory days as he does on the telling "Last Days of Disco". Who Williams wants to be now is Elton John - and he's lived a similar life of controversy, but in fast-forward.

That's not to say that he is done with his unique style of plain-talking. "Bodies" declares that "All we've ever wanted is to look good naked", but the sentiment is a flaccid attempt at provocation that sticks out in a song that plays around with funk, Gregorian chants and anthemic rock. Oh, and he'd like you to know that "Jesus didn't die for you". The song's not served well either by EMI's decision to bleep their star performer out while he's trying to resurrect himself with a bit of a bang. Only now it sounds more like a fart in the wind.

Horn's preference for a bank of strings and a measured pace allows for the serious artist in Williams to shine, and the songwriting is strong. "Last Days of Disco", "Somewhere", "Deceptacon" and "Starstruck" form the melodic and emotional core of the album - swaying from weighty regret, to self-help advice on how NOT to be like Robbie Williams, to the realisation that the pop landscape has changed a whole lot in the last couple of years - so he may as well enjoy the ride - while sounding ready to reclaim some of that territory for himself, but only just.

It may alarm Williams' fans to hear how resigned he sounds here, as if he just popped in to say one last thing while they all succumb to the charms of the latest upstart with the X-Factor, or similar pop coronation by public vote. Maybe it's not a comeback, but he could have made more of an effort to entertain, a task Williams once relished with thrilling commitment. The party really is over, so please turn down the music and leave quietly while the host plots his next celebration.