Defending The Indefensible : PAUL WELLER!

that was just a tossed off (hah) comment, no problem with him as a person, but i don't like his voice or his music very much

ok having now half-listened to "pick it up" and "the ballad of jimmy mccabe"... it's not for me

Try "Wake Up The Nation", "Fast Car/Slow Traffic", "Green" and "Kling I Klang".

Aw, I really like 'Pick It Up' ...

I'll always keep an ear out, but buswise it's not a case of getting off as such, more a case of 'how many more Weller albums do you need? '

LOLZ...

he belongs among the greats: steve stapleton, yo la tengo, kid 606...
― mark s (mark s), Thursday, July 10, 2003 2:42 PM (thirteen years ago)

last paul weller i ever bought or listened to was the hot sound of "ghosts of dachau". that was enough for me.

https://scontent-lga3-1.xx.fbcdn.net/v/t1.0-9/17353241_1762068367440141_5528467336823693795_n.jpg?oh=b722886072356ac14b11c1c68d213291&oe=5967714F

Well, the "hot sound" comment is to describe 'Shout to the Top', which is one of The Style Council's best, IMO.

i don't mean this in a mean way but i kinda consider the jam a youthful pleasure. loved those records when i was a kid and would never play them now. which is a little odd because i still play plenty of the stuff i loved when i was a kid. and its not the stridency and super-serious nature of a lot of jam either cuz i still listen to tons of punk and rap and metal.

I can kinda see what you mean... I still get a lot out of Jam stuff whenever I'm in the mood for it, but their music was at its most potent for me when I was in my mid-to-late teens. Which makes sense given how old Weller was when he wrote and recorded that stuff.

This guy is having one of the best late-careers of anyone ever, and it's like there's a pill you get in England when you're a small child that makes you hate him (and nobody in the US knows who he is). New album is yet another great one. And I really don't like The Jam at all.

Like someone with a decent amount of talent decided to fill in the blanks of Bowie's late 70s discography. I've got no problem with that.

I've only listened to it once so far, but I really enjoyed it for the most part. I dunno if it's as good as Sonik Kicks or Saturn's Pattern yet, but Weller's work from at least 22 Dreams onwards has always blossomed with repeated listens for me.

I keep hearing insistences that he's actually gotten good again but as someone who found pretty much everything he did post-Jam to be insufferable or worse, I have my doubts. Then again I last checked in around 1999 or so. So what exactly happened, did he realize that all his attempts at raspy soul wailing sucked or what?

Yes.

tbqh, I liked the Jam, I loved (up to a point) the Style Council for being the first band that actually opened up and took on a broad canvas of styles, and liked them less when they settled for the Smooth Soul (along with the clothes) - If the "Modernism" album had come out at the time, I'd have loved them again but the "Cost of Loving" was a bore, and the "confessions" album just made me want to leave the room and do something more interesting instead. (When I played it in the car, it wasn't so bad but my journeys weren't as long as that side 2!)

At some point, I did invoke a "FGS! Paul, Reconnect with yr Small Faces e.p's will yer?", and funnily enough that happened.

Enjoyed the first solo one, but got less interested with each subsequent one. There's only so much Weller you need, unless you're one of those blokes that buys only Weller and his pals..

So, nowadays he's expanding his sonic palate like he used to. I might give each album a listen, but I don't need them really.

Oh, and that "Sonic Kicks" album cover was "Paul turns up at the school disco to pick up his kids"

There's a nice track w/Robert Wyatt on the new one

Like someone with a decent amount of talent decided to fill in the blanks of Bowie's late 70s discography. I've got no problem with that.

― dlp9001, Monday, 15 May 2017 01:12

I read that he particularly loathes Bowie. Apparently Weller has a goth son and a resentful Jam member compared his son to Bowie to piss him off.

I loved (up to a point) the Style Council for being the first band that actually opened up and took on a broad canvas of styles,

what

LOL, yeah, that was a bit of a bizarre statement.

I think he just meant that The Style Council was Weller's first attempt at trying to broaden his range.

Yeah, not the first band ever, gordeblimeys.

I was meaning more in the sense of bands from the punk/new wave, but even then that's a generalisation.

I keep hearing insistences that he's actually gotten good again but as someone who found pretty much everything he did post-Jam to be insufferable or worse, I have my doubts. Then again I last checked in around 1999 or so. So what exactly happened, did he realize that all his attempts at raspy soul wailing sucked or what?

― Ned Raggett, Tuesday, May 16, 2017 5:20 AM (thirteen hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

He felt that he'd taken his initial solo sound as far as he could take it by 2005 and decided he needed to change it up a bit, although I personally think he could have done with changing direction long before then. If you don't like his vocals on the stuff you've heard, I can't forsee you enjoying the way his voice sounds on his most recent stuff - his voice has become even more raspy since Wild Wood/Stanley Road etc.

This is the one I always play to people to try to explain that things have changed. If you don't like this, then probably safe to ignore everything I've said...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GxdLSv_Xbbg

^ I think there's better examples than even that. I mean, that one's got Bruce Foxton on it, so the chorus sounds very Jam-like (to me) but it's offset by all the other stuff.

Wake Up the Nation is my least favourite of the post-As Is Now albums.

Oh but I love "Wake Up The Nation" in part because Paul seems to be consciously avoiding sounds/styles that he's used to death in the past, c.f. the weird vocal quirk on the title track's chorus.

God, 'Shadow of the Sun' is fucking perfection.

His latest one (True Meanings) seems to mark a bit of a break from the type of material he's been doing over the last 10 years or so - it's basically more of an acoustic guitar led album featuring songs he's been stockpiling for a while because they didn't fit on other albums. There's some nice stuff on it ('Glide', 'Mayfly', 'Old Castles', the opening track) but it's quite a long album and all of the tracks are in the same mould, so it feels like more of a slog than it should. Hopefully it's just a detour and he gets back to making albums like Sonik Kicks and Saturn's Pattern again. The last 10 years of his solo career has had plenty of surprising moments.

Weller (appropriately) playing this week with this flag onstage:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2a8AItMybew