Album Review: Paul Weller – ‘66’
One of the few artists to have No.1 albums in five consecutive decades, Paul Weller is nothing if not a music legend. Starting his career aged just 19 as the leader of punk-mod outfit The Jam, he wrote enough classic songs between 1977 and 1982 to last a lifetime. For any other artist, this would have been a catalogue to mine and milk for decades to come. Not Weller. Aged 24, he gambled everything and split The Jam, citing an unwillingness to fall into a restrictive creative rut. It’s this insatiable desire to innovate and progress which has guided Weller through a stellar career ever since, from the soulful Euro-pop of The Style Council to the blockbuster solo comeback of ‘Stanley Road’, and to more experimental pastures such as 2008’s ‘22 Dreams’.
Which leads us to ‘66’, the 17th solo album from the Modfather, named to reflect his recent 66th birthday, which he celebrated a day after the record’s release. As you might expect, ruminations on age and mortality are to the fore on an album which gives a fascinating insight into what became of the angry young man who once demanded “You better listen man/ Because the kid’s know where it’s at”. He wasn’t wrong then, and as he proved during a recent interview with the Guardian, he’s lost none of his bite and insight. “Am I against genocides and ethnic cleansing? Yes, I am, funnily enough”, he retorts when asked about the Palestinian flag proudly displayed at his recent gigs. As for the upcoming General Election, he’s sceptical to say the least. “You can either vote for Rishi Sunak’s Tory party, or you can vote for Keir Starmer’s Tory party”, he concludes.
This righteous anger isn’t much felt on ‘66’, aside from the soul-rock stomp of ‘Jumble Queen’, in which he “kill[s] the hours that are in between/ I check the news for conspiracy”. Instead, he delivers a mellow and reflective record, though unusually for Weller, many of the lyrics here are penned by friends and fellow songwriters including Noel Gallagher, Bobby Gillespie, and Suggs. The Madness legend wrote the words for opening track ‘Ship Of Fools’, while Weller provides the song’s gentle acoustic sway, it’s sparkling serenity reminiscent of Oasis’ ‘Half The World Away’, and as a result, Burt Bacharach’s ‘This Guy’s In Love With You’.
Suggs, in a roundabout way, is also partly responsible for the dreamy ballad ‘Nothing’: his friend Chalky originally wrote the words for a poem, and Weller realised they fit perfectly with some music he'd already made. Although not his own words, Weller clearly relates to the song’s sentiment of “Having nothing else/ But each other”, and you can hear that is his emotionally gritty vocal delivery. His husky tones remain front and centre on the next track, the feather-light waltz of ‘My Best Friend’s Coat’, while ‘Rise Up Singing’ sees him backed by luscious strings on a smooth, funk-tinged singalong, the sonic equivalent of an easy going afternoon in the sunshine. If ‘I Woke Up’ and ‘Sleepy Hollow’ take this relaxed attitude a little too far - to the point where dozing off is the natural reaction - then ‘A Glimpse Of You’, with its softly psychedelic stylings, more than makes up for it.
‘In Full Flight’, meanwhile, deploys female backing vocalists to enhance its laidback bob, before ‘Soul Wandering’ shakes things up with a spiky riff reminiscent of ‘Woodcutter’s Son’, the fifth track on Weller’s mid nineties masterclass ‘Stanley Road’. From here the song opens up into a gospel-coded groove, which finds Weller wanting “to believe in something greater than me”, a lyric penned by Bobby Gillespie, but very much in keeping with the album’s portrayal of a maturing Modfather. Final song ‘Burnt Out’ is an epic, almost mystical conclusion to the record, building slowly to a trance-like cacophony of saxophone and strings. It’s more Pink Floyd than punk rock, but shouldn’t we know by now to expect the unexpected when it comes to Weller? He is, after all, a musical chameleon who’s been raising the bar ever since those scratchy opening chords to ‘In The City’ first cut through the airwaves back in 1977. Well over forty years later, and Paul Weller is still a force to be reckoned with, without doubt one of rock’s most innovative, forward-thinking musicians.
There’s a reason he christened himself The Changingman – and we wouldn’t have it any other way.
Words by Ben Left
