Paul Weller: 66 ★★★★☆
The year 1976 was when a teenage Paul Weller started making waves with fierce punk combo The Jam. But 1966 probably remains the seminal year in Weller’s musical psyche, when his eight-year-old self was absorbing British rock’s expansion into psychedelia with the Beatles, The Who and Small Faces, whilst America poured out soulful shades of urban black pop to empower the UK’s stylish mod scene.
Weller turned 66 on Saturday, the young tyro having long since ascended to grandee status in British rock culture, known affectionately as the Modfather. He shares a vocational ethos with such other hardworking veterans as Van Morrison and Robert Plant, a drive to keep making new music for its own reward – and too bad for anyone who just wants to hear the hits.
The number 66 is the name of Weller’s 16th solo album (subsequent to six with The Jam and five with the Style Council), decorated with a handsome numerical cover by the great British pop artist Peter Blake (who designed the Beatles’ 1967 masterpiece Sgt Pepper as well as Weller’s 1995 solo bestseller, Stanley Road). A sense of history runs deep in the grooves of the only original punk icon to admit loving the Beatles.
It’s fair to say there is nothing groundbreaking on offer, just another set of beautifully constructed and performed songs of soul and meaning, drawing on all the above influences with a strand of bucolic English folk (Traffic, Fairport Convention and Nick Drake) that have been a part of Weller’s oeuvre since 1993’s Wild Wood.
The odd departure is that, for the first time, Weller has collaborated on almost every track, composing music to lyrics written by friends including Suggs of Madness (the jauntily philosophical Ship of Fools and jazzily romantic Nothing), Bobby Gillespie of Primal Scream (psychedelic spiritual rocker Soul Wandering), Dr Robert of the Blow Monkeys (orchestral easy listening soul anthem Rise Up Singing) and Noel Gallagher (Britpop belter Jumble Queen, which has a horn section to get any vintage rock fan punching the air in delight). The fact that all these offerings sound indistinguishable from Weller’s own elegant lyrical style – seeking understated poetry in ordinary life – is indicative of what an influence he has been on his peers.