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Musician Paul Weller: Always optimist, always modernist
Photo:
Sandra Vijandi / Universal Music
Album of the week:
Paul Weller - "Fat Pop Vol. 1"
In the last few months of this pandemic isolation, have you also had the feeling that you are aging rapidly?
Maybe it's just because every morning in the video conference you always look into your own, increasingly wrinkled face, in that small, nasty selfie window on Zoom or Teams.
Then you count the gray whiskers and sigh softly to yourself.
Well, there is nothing you can do about getting older.
"Days lose their names and time slips away" was the title of Paul Weller's 1995 photo book that reflected his long career.
Above all, the breaks: from the early high with The Jam in the late seventies, the reinvention with Style Council in the eighties to personal Ground Zero in 1990: no record deal, no band, no perspective, private life in ruins.
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Fat Pop (Ltd. Edt. Standard CD)
Label: Polydor (Universal Music)
Label: Polydor (Universal Music)
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05/14/2021 5:21 p.m.
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But Weller just didn't let time slip through his fingers. He remembered his talent, decided again to just do his thing - and then, in the wake of the Britpop boom in the nineties, he became the solo and live artist who is still successful today and reverently admired by younger musicians as "Modfather". Who brings out one album after the other (the last was only released in July 2020), always remains musically flexible, never stands still even at almost 63 years of age, is still a god of style, even if the now white-gray Mod-Frize is frayed and now to Iggy Pop reminds. No matter. If you are getting old, then please like Paul Weller.
At least he has so far shown himself immune to the blandness to which some older colleagues apparently fell victim to the lockdown. Weller's “Fat Pop Vol. 1”, which already announces the swift sequel in the title, is, if you will, an alternative to Van Morrison's “Latest Record Project Vol. 1”, which appeared last week, even if “Van the Man «Of course has over a decade more under his belt than» Changing Man «Weller. Both are united by the musical nostalgia, the love for soul and R&B of the sixties and seventies, Motown and Muscle Shoals. While Morrison has wriggled himself into a self-pitying, ultimately reactionary lateral thinker impasse to dignified blues music, Weller remains (for the time being) an optimist and a modernist who likes to experiment.
Already »Cosmic Fringes«, the opening track, makes this clear with an electronic pulsating beat, an amazing, not necessarily tasteful hybrid of »Funky Town« and Bowie or Bowie, for example »Scary Monsters«, a smack for fans who keep repeating »Wild Wood «Want, Wellers will soon be a 25-year-old masterpiece. Glam-rock continues with »True«, in which Lia Metcalfe from the Liverpool band The Mysterines sings along - Weller always has an outstretched hand for newcomer acts that he thinks is great. The guitars roar, the dad rock rolls, but a trumpet and a middle section that dissolves into improvisation already suggest that there is more to be done here. For example the pumping jazz funk of the title track or the inspired hymn "Shades of Blue" (with daughter Leah), perhaps the purest, most innocent pop song Weller has ever written.
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Cover of »Fat Pop Vol. 1«
Photo: Universal Music
The album was created in lockdown, of course.
Weller sent sketches to his band by email and put together a sound in the home studio, which now opens up astonishingly wide spaces: Strings are always looking for pathos and grand gestures.
"Testify", with flute and saxophone solo, is a liberating jam with gospel shouts, a call-and-response mantra of self-motivation and assertion: "Get up and testify," demands Weller, now a fitness apostle, who has renounced alcohol and drugs: "Shoodoopadoop, sing it all night long, let your mind roll on".
Andreas Borcholte's playlist
Photo:
Christian O. Bruch / laif
Paul Weller:
Shades of Blue
St. Vincent
:
Down
The Black Keys:
Walk With Me
Maurice Summen:
Organic
Shirin David:
I can
Eunique:
Lost
Xenia
Rubinos
:
Cógelo Suave
Koreless:
Black Rainbow
Little Snake feat. Flying Lotus:
Fallen Angels
India Jordan:
closing time
Go to Spotify playlist Go to Apple Music playlist
"Cobweb Connections" is also about mental agility, when Weller, always a phrase pig, thinks about the "good things in life", wipes away the mental cobwebs of prematurely old age and wants to jump for joy.
To do this, people clap their hands, a Spanish guitar is twirled, violins whisper: kitschy, but awesome.
“The Pleasure”, simmering with suspense like the Temptations or Isaac Hayes, is the solemn, life-affirming commitment of soul fan and adept Weller to Black Lives Matter: “Lose your prejudice, lose your hatred”.
Not everything in this eclectic curated candy jar full of fat, high-calorie pop toffees and fudges is equally enjoyable.
But Weller is already far removed from the old work that he seemed to be gradually introducing three years ago with "True Meanings".
The only thing that captivates is the energy, the unbreakable lust for the sixties sound, also Beatles and again and again small faces with which he once dreamed himself out of the working class sadness of the London suburbs that still inspire him.
With that he even brings home a blunt, Slade or Smokie reminiscent of a Schunkie song like “Failed”: “All things that made no fucking sense.
Oh, I failed, ”he sings in it, and you're completely disarmed.
With “In Better Time” and “Still Glides The Stream” he finally wipes everything through with the really big, dripping teardrop until you actually want to believe in the utopia of a better world.
Again everything (and all) made fresh.
(7.9)
Briefly listened to:
St. Vincent - "Daddy's Home"
The biggest mistake in looking at Annie Clark's music is looking for authenticity.
Like her role model David Bowie, the celebrated US singer and guitarist remains aloof fictional character.
Her sixth album as St. Vincent is something like her "Aladdin Sane": It takes Clark's real daddy, a stock exchange cheater who has just been released from jail, as the inspiration for an unfortunately somewhat too artificial, but beautifully outrageous musical about guilt and Morality, fame and family drama in the unbounded rock and funk sound of the seventies.
(7.3)
The Black Keys - "Delta Kream"
Here again everything is authentic: the love of the Black Keys Dan Auerbach and Pat Carney for their two deceased blues heroes from Hill Country in northern Mississippi, RL Burnside and Junior Kimbrough, as well as the iconic Eggleston photo on the cover and inside For two days with the local heroes Kenny Brown and Eric Deaton grooved classics from "Crawling King Snake" to "Going Down South" to "Walk With Me".
Endless boogie, back to the roots
.
(8.2)
Weezer - "Van Weezer"
If metal, then like this: Although, metal is not what Rivers Cuomo, the Wes Anderson of alternative pop, simulates on the 15th album of his band Weezer, rather soapbox hard rock by eternally pubescent college nerds: Blue Oyster Cult , Kiss, Quiet Riot, Aerosmith, Ozzy Osbourne and other hairy 1970s moshers were the inspiration for a euphoric, loudly nodding power sound and a lovable homage to the late "hero" Eddie Van Halen. Sweet.
(6.0)