Paul Weller slid through times like no other musician. He founded The Jam in 1972, which became one of the most simple pop bands in the decade. He played in the 80s, when rock music became so terrible, played soul jazz. And in the 90s he was the Modfather, to whom Oasis and Co. looked up. One unites his phases: Weller never delivered a bad album.
Recommendations of the editorial team
DUTY
The Jam – All Mod Cons (1978)
Two albums are deserted The Jam 1977 – both offer appropriate music at the moment. All Mod Cons shows the band a very consistent for the first time a year later. The British Invasion, especially the love for the kinks, also manifests itself beyond the cover version “David Watts” in terms of content and musically, in fact, Weller tries to find a kind of own, working-class kitchen Sink Realism, which is sometimes underlaid with harsh power pop, sometimes with folk acids.
Five and a half stars
The Jam – The Gift (1982)
Punk has long been dead, Weller an adult man. On the Finanlen album by The Jam leaves the combination of its traces. Musically, The Jam are versatile than ever, in addition to classic power pop work such as “Happy Together”, Motown Soul and Funk are as equal. Weller is effortless, his voice has clearly gained expressiveness. “Precious” shows that Bruce Foxton and Rick Buckler were no longer relevant for this sound.
Six stars
The Style Council – Café Bleu (1984)
And the mods came the tears: Paul Weller practices together with Mick Talbot, thanks to a past at the Merton Parkas and Dexys Midnight Runners in style, like the master, to Sophisticated (and still quite analogue) Softpop: Funky, Jazzy, a stinker phase, a stinking finger in the face of all of them in the end were more rocky enough. Nice: Tracey Thorn from everything but the girl sings on “The Paris Match”.
Five stars
The Style Council – Confessions of A Pop Group (1988)
After the ambivalent, The Cost of Loving perceived it between the band and the label. Before the final escalation – and after the transfer of £ 500,000, Weller and Talbot still managed this masterpiece; What sometimes begins as a almost silly bar jazz is sometimes converted to overloaded, but quite consistent pop music, which fetches a lot from the radio and soul and culminates in the ten-minute title track.
Five stars
Paul Weller – Wild Wood (1993)
After the end of The Style Council, Weller had been looking for a new creative partner: Brendan Lynch was a logical choice; He previously produced a hybrid of hip-hop, radio and acid jazz that was also interesting in retrospect with the Talkin ‘Loud Band Young Disciples. New with this second record: guitarist Steve Cradock by Ocean Color Scene. What the solo debut indicated was now completed; A crazy sovereign sounding sound that Weller today assigns to his love for Steve Winwood and Traffic, but which surrounds all the traces that Weller already followed with The Jam and The Style Council. Note on the side: The cooperation also paid off for Ocean Color, the success that the band had three years later with the Moseley Shoes, which was also produced by Lynch, would hardly have been possible without Weller.
Six stars
Supplementary
The Jam – Sound Effects (1980)
After his ambitions, which are quite redeeming, but also quite grim setting Sons (1979), again a pop plate. Sound Effects is not the best The-Jam album, but that that shows the band most compact, on the destination and yet varied. Easy greetings come above all when it comes to rhythm work, from Manchester-Wave Joy Divisions, you can hear the Beatles during revolver times. After “Pretty Green” Liam Gallagher named his fashion label in 2009. That fits – after all, the song is about money.
Four and a half stars
The Style Council – Our Favorite Shop (1985)
The only number one album by The Style Council is just as caught in terms of lyrics as well as Wellers’s “Cappuccino Kid” liner emergency. But it is not necessarily the best of the band. With “The Lodgers” and “Walls Come Tumbling Down” it stocks two tried and tested single hits; “Come to Milton Keynes” is a pretty swipe on the realities of the retort city; Elsewhere, the plate is sometimes lost in the handicraft.
Four and a half stars
Paul Weller – Paul Weller (1992)
The birth of the Modfather is out of necessity. Weller stands without a band, without a record contract, a last style-co-kil album no longer appears. He is inevitably continuing – and publishes with the single “Into Tomorrow”, published under the band name Paul Weller Movement. The result: a record deal with GO! Discs and this album, on which one thing initially noticed: Weller’s text work has changed, it is no longer about England, but about Weller itself. Musically it is soul, around Weller and with more than one nod towards Acid Jazz. The fact that Paul Francis (James Taylor Quartet) played in Movement fits well.
Four and a half stars
Paul Weller – Stanley Road (1995)
The birth of the modfather begins here; We hear Steve Cradock and Noel Gallagher again as guests, but also Stevie Winwood and Mick Talbot. The cover comes from the iconic pop art graphic artist Peter Blake (Sgt. Peppers). It produces Lynch again, but where he always looked for the width on the predecessor, he now snaps into a pop song. There are still sound games: Tracks like the eternity single “The Changingman” not only hear loud, but also about headphones!
Four and a half stars
Paul Weller – 22 Dreams (2008)
In the first decade of the zero years, the handle and shadow gave themselves in hand at Weller. None of his studio albums were bad, there was little hanging. 22 Dreams is the exception. Starting with the spring psychedelica in the opener “Light Nights” to the null-coarse marching title track to the sound scapes of “One Bright Star”, Weller gives the eclectic with a sense. As guests: Robert Wyatt, Graham Coxon, Noel Gallagher.
Five stars
The compilations
It is a bit confusing with Paul Weller. In addition to the singles and studio albums, he not only published numerous compilations, live recordings and with Studio 150 even a-decent but not spectacular-collection of cover versions. Some of his solo albums have also learned detailed deluxe reversions in recent years. And then he liked to play with the others-most recently, he was heard as a feature guest on two singles from the soul revivalist Stone Foundation. The four-CD set Hit Parade, published in 2006, gives a good overview of most of his staff.
Four and a half stars
The box set The Complete Adventures of the Style Council, published in 1989, is certainly interesting for style-council friends. The final Modernism – A New Decade (recorded in 1989Five stars), on which the band deals extensively with American house sounds and which was rejected by Polydor at the time, was first illustrated here. In 2019 a live album was released: Other Aspects-Live at the Royal Festival Hall in London, an arc from early the Jam days over Paul Wellers Time with Style Council to the songs of the album True Meaning, published last year and was recorded together with the musicians of the London Metropolitan Orchestra. Under the aegis of the conductor Hannah Peel, up to 24 musicians are on stage.
Five stars