ARTICLES - TAKE THAT 10 OCTOBER 2014 Take That's new single, These Days, review: 'uplifting'- The Telegraph

Take That's first single without Jason Orange is a fun and fizzy comeback, says Neil McCormick

Take That have unveiled a new single, These Days, on which the surviving three piece plead, “Take me back to where it all began.” Which is precisely what the music tries to do. With the snap of sharp disco drums and the driving, shiny rhythm guitar amid a cascade of synths, it evokes the cheesy, uplifting energy of their original boy band dance pop.
It’s probably the group’s most dance floor-oriented offering since 1993’s Relight My Fire, an attempt to conjure up the giddy motion of their debut album Take That And Party, although it’s hard to imagine the surviving middle-aged man band pulling off the same dance moves without giving themselves a hernia. The message, nevertheless, seems pretty clear, trumpeted in a chorus sung by three voices in tight harmony: “Gotta live for these days”. For the great British pop survivors, it is business as usual.
There was a time when to suggest Take That had slimmed down would have referred to weight issues, but these days it means they’ve lost another member. The forthcoming album will be entitled III (that should be read as “three” not “ill”, which was my first unfortunate impression), presumably not so much to lament the departure of Jason Orange as to triumphantly herald the emergence of a new trio.
Robbie Wiliiams has been and gone (and been and gone) and now Orange has followed him out of the studio door. As Oscar Wilde never said, to lose one member is unfortunate, to lose Jason Orange won’t make the slightest bit of difference.

Let’s be fair, nobody was entirely sure what he did anyway. A lot of manufactured groups have a spare member, some young gun originally employed because of his cherubic looks, nifty dance moves or relationship with the manager, who turns out not to have any notable musical ability. Take That actually had two. Howard Donald remains in the line-up, a singer who rarely takes a lead verse and has never released any solo material, for very good reason. He can just about hold a harmony though, and Take That put on a united front by returning with a track with no featured lead vocalist, all three surviving members belting the song out together.

The single is out on November 23, with the album coming a week later. These Days was written by the three members and overseen by in-demand American producer Greg Kurstin (Lily Allen’s co-writer, who has also brought shiny pop hooks to Katy Perry, Ellie Goulding, P!nk and Lana Del Rey). And it’s a lot of fizzy fun, which, if you closed your eyes to blot out the image of Gary Barlow looking like an estate agent in a suit, could have come from their debut album.
And there is enough hook-laden chutzpah about this comeback to suggest these unlikely survivors of British pop are about to triumph again. If you didn’t actually know someone had left the band, you would never guess from listening to These Days, although there might just be a message to the deserter in the opening line: “I can see the future coming to you crying with a sadness in your eyes”.
The future is bright; the future is not Jason Orange. Take that and weep.