Defending The Indefensible : PAUL WELLER!

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