Towards the chances, Paul Weller has entered a freeing new inventive section during the last decade or so. As soon as the unchanging guy, obstinate emblem chief for rootsy Actual Ale Rock, the previous Jam and Taste Council frontman has broadened his sonic horizons considerably on fresh albums, making one of the maximum adventurous and kaleidoscopic song of his lengthy occupation. Embracing lavish orchestration, experimental soundscapes, left-field collaborators and digital textures, Weller turns out to have after all twigged that the good flowering of 60s pop gave him a collection of equipment, no longer regulations.
Titled to mirror his upcoming landmark birthday, 66 sports activities a hanging Pop Artwork duvet portray through 91-year-old legend Peter Blake, his first for Weller since 1995’s Stanley Highway. Lyrical and musical visitors come with Noel Gallagher, Bobby Gillespie, Suggs and Richard Hawley; there are sufficient acquainted faces right here to reassure Weller traditionalists. However 66 additionally prominently options more youthful skills together with French art-pop manufacturer Christophe Vaillant, digital composer and string arranger Hannah Peel, and Brooklyn vocal trio Say She She.
Confirming Weller’s long-time function as unofficial uncle to the Gallagher brothers, Noel makes a vocal cameo on blues-rock chugger Jumble Queen, probably the most typical observe right here.
However the Modfather all the time had extra musical commonplace flooring with their Britpop competitors Blur, a comparability that has simplest deepened as Weller’s latter-day albums leaned extra into wistful, craving, grainy-voiced English chamber-pop. There are definitely Blur-ish moments scattered throughout 66, from the tenderly crooned, evenly digital psych-pop ballad Flying Fish, to the beautiful Not anything, a jazzy romantic pastoral that feels like Damon Albarn channelling Curtis Mayfield.
High quality ranges are persistently prime, with elegant finger-picked folk-pop reveries like I Woke Up nestled along luxurious, harp-kissed, Bacharach-sized chansons like Upward thrust Up Making a song and Glimpse Of You. At the lushly orchestrated fairground-pop waltz My Highest Buddy’s Coat, Weller’s melismatic warble hits Marc Almond-ish ranges of torrid melodrama now and then. In the meantime, the reverb-drenched avant-doo-wop swooner In Complete Flight is without doubt one of the best, and strangest, issues he has ever recorded.
From suburban Woking to the farther fringes of the pop cosmos, Weller’s sudden however very welcome space-rock odyssey continues.
