Almost exactly 40 years on from his teenage debut with The Jam’s In The City, Paul Weller remains as energetically engaged as ever with music: hard on the heels of his recent soundtrack to the boxing film Jawbone comes A Kind Revolution, the latest instalment in the Indian summer that started with 22 Dreams.
Like that album, it’s a mature mix of reflection and assertion – albeit corralled this time into just ten tracks – in which Weller’s musings on life, love and society are channelled through a diverse series of musical modes, most of them constantly seeking to seep into other styles. “She Moves With The Fayre”, for instance, is not the old folk song, but an airy jazz-pop paean to a lover. With Robert Wyatt contributing a brief vocal and a trumpet break, it sounds like something The Young Rascals might have come up with if Curtis Mayfield was their producer. “Nova”, by contrast, is more in the neo-psychedelic style of Saturn’s Patterns, a sort of sci-fi expression of ambition and alienation in which Weller’s expressive urges (“My mind is a running stream”) require transport to another planet, via bleeping synths and an oozing backward guitar solo from The Strypes’ Josh McClorey.
At one time, Weller’s more mod-ish fans might have balked at following such sudden tangents, but these days they’re meat and drink to a career profile that can swing from the lollopy charm of a jazzy tribute to painter Edward Hopper, who “dreams in muted symphonies”, to the romantic celebration of a “crystal kiss” in “New York”, atmospherically conjured by the traffic noise and the subtle Latin undertow to the scudding groove. Taken together, the two tracks seem to constitute a tentative love letter to America from a quintessentially British artist steeped in American culture. More homegrown, by contrast, is “One Tear”, which harnesses social complaint to old-school house groove, with Boy George joining Weller in pleasingly harmonious choruses.
Elsewhere, the pop-soul swagger of opener “Woo Se Mama” finds PP Arnold and Madeleine Bell lured into New Orleans R&B gumbo, while the standout track “The Cranes Are Back” shifts skilfully from reflective piano intro to a sort of psychedelic gospel climax, with no untoward grinding of gears. It’s a punning expression of hope: in some cultures, the reappearance of these elegant birds is regarded as a positive sign, which Weller analogises here in the urban sprout of industrial cranes as representing renewed economic possibilities. Well, maybe. But at least he’s staying observant, and engaged. That, surely, is the message of album closer “The Impossible Idea”, a languid, waltz-time affair of jazzy mien which finds him musing about the power of ideas, the way that huge changes can be triggered by a single thought. You remember thoughts: it’s what we had before social media. #Paulweller #Paulweller
