Paul Weller

Paul Weller has been “turning up” now, for the best part of five decades. A recording career that began in 1977 now takes in the release of his 17th solo album and his 28th in total. It’s tempting to dwell on past achievements – the Brit Awards, the Ivor Novellos, and the number one albums (eight in total) – but like all self-respecting modernists, Weller views his creative past rather like a motorist might look in the rearview mirror – foot on the pedal, in constant forward motion. And the long-awaited successor to 2021’s universally acclaimed Fat Pop (Vol. 1) is no exception to that rule.

As the title and artwork by Sir Peter Blake (his first for Weller since 1995’s Stanley Road) indicate, Paul Weller’s new album marks the completion of his 66th journey around the sun. Its twelve songs were worked up in Weller’s Black Barn studio over the course of three years. The lead single to emerge from the record, "Rise Up Singing", is a perfect microcosm of what awaits new and old fans alike: a sustained sunburst of soul and spirituality from an artist continually finding new ways to alchemise the miracle of living into words and melody. Now a cherished member of Weller’s extended music family, Hannah Peel’s string arrangement was laid down during two sessions at Abbey Road’s famous Studio Two; the words moulded into shape by Weller, from a musical sketch sent to him by his old friend and fellow Curtis Mayfield disciple Dr. Robert.

Here and elsewhere, 66 is an album that pulls back the camera lens and shines a light on the way Weller’s creativity interacts with his wider world. In recent years, he’s been an enthusiastic collaborator, but 66 feels like the most fully-realized celebration of that process, a free, fertile exchange of inspiration among kindred spirits. It’s a tone established from the outset by one of the earliest songs to be completed for the album. Sculpted from a poem sent him by his old friend and Madness frontman Graham “Suggs” McPherson, Ship Of Fools is perhaps best heard as an attempt to find something permanent and meaningful amid the fractured realities of life in this turbulent age. Its lyrical qualities extend beyond words, to the exquisite interplay of flute and piano that leads us to the song’s conclusion, somehow underscoring the sense that recurs throughout 66 that the human spirit will outlive any dark forces that seek to thwart its resolve.

"In Full Flight" is the result of a musical correspondence with studio-based pop experimentalists White Label that stretches back to 2018’s True Meanings. Accentuating the mirrorball glide of its arrangement, the song benefits from the stellar backing vocals of acclaimed “disco-delic” Brooklyn trio Say She She, who made a mid-tour detour to Weller’s Black Barn studio last year, nailing their contribution in a single afternoon. Of the song itself, Weller recalls: “I had the instrumental for a long time, but I didn’t know quite what it needed to be. In the end, that very process was the key to it, because it’s a song about keeping faith and not giving up. Faith is constant, but sometimes you stray from it. What you believe in doesn’t go away, but sometimes you lose sight of it. So that song is really a sort of note to myself.”

A similarly febrile sense of reflection extends across two standout collaborations with French producer and recording artist Christophe Vaillant (Le Superhomard). Blown into the blue by a stunning arrangement from Hannah Peel, "A Glimpse Of You" is perhaps the closest Weller has come to the cosmopolitan swoon of his work with The Style Council. Elaborating on his work with Vaillant, he explains that the joy of this way of writing is all about throwing yourself open to serendipity; blindsiding your creativity into action.

That’s exactly what happened on the album’s other Vaillant co-write "My Best Friend’s Coat", which emerged almost fully formed as Weller was at home bathing his daughter and Vaillant’s waltz-time sketch got to work on his subconscious, conjuring an autumnal chanson into the liminal space opened up by the plaintive piano motif. “You know when you’re onto something good,” elaborates Weller, “because you almost can't get it down fast enough. You draw upon fragments of real life – hence lines like “in the depths of despair, I had another drink” – but really, when you have a melody like that, it’s asking you to overdramatize because that’s what that chanson tradition leans into.”

With Vaillant also on hand to add sparkling synth garnish on it and exemplary bass guitar from Josh McCrory, bright modernist funk banger "Flying Fish" seems to summon the same spirit as loved-up Weller deep cuts such as "Starlite" and "Aim High", nailing its pop colours to a chorus that defies resistance. “That was another early one we did,” he recalls, “I wanted to move it away from the demo, which was me playing this rhythmic guitar and Josh totally got it.”

Along with "Flying Fish", two more sole Weller compositions on 66 warrant special mention. "Sleepy Hollow" is one of those songs that doesn’t feel written so much as retrieved from the subconscious mind of everyone who will hear it; a pastoral soul lullaby whose immediacy belies the eighteen months that separate its conception and completion. In "I Woke Up", our protagonist is parachuted into a strange environment forced by a sudden change of circumstance to reappraise who they are. “I woke up and everything had gone,” he sings, “My house was not my home.” Shedding further light on the song, Weller remembers a formative episode of The Avengers that aired when he was just ten years of age (‘The Morning After’) – “in which “Steed walks outside into this little town and everyone’s been knocked out with sleeping gas. I think that, looking back, there’s a post-COVID thing happening there, this sense that nothing can ever be the same again.”

This sense of a world forever changed also dramatically informs the album’s climactic closing song. Spectacularly spidering out from words sent to Weller by acclaimed Orcadian songwriter and composer Erland Cooper (The Magnetic North, Erland & The Carnival), "Burn Out" is a lysergic elegy to a collective nightmare, its emotional punch amplified by Jacko Peake’s sublime saxophone and a whirlpool rush of portentous strings.

With a supercharged horn arrangement from The Stone Foundation’s Steve Triggs, the bustling basement soul of "Jumble Queen" – featuring a lyrical turn from Noel Gallagher – has already earned its place in Weller’s live set, and surely it’s just a matter of time before the penultimate song on the album "Soul Wandering" follows suit. Though its lyric comes from the pen of Bobby Gillespie, the song’s lyrical concerns – “And I want to believe / There is something greater than me” –  it nonetheless echoes sentiments parlayed by Weller on so much of what precedes it on 66.

Alert Weller to the fact that this constitutes his longest-ever gap between two albums and he lets forth an inscrutable smile. “That sort of thing used to keep me up at night,” he confides, “But it’s not like I haven’t been writing. For this album, I had at least twenty songs to choose from. It was a luxury to be able to spend time with them and let them tell me which ones needed to be on the record.” And when it came to naming it, Weller pondered the fact that he would be 66 years old when the album emerged; more to the point, exactly what that meant.

The best part of a lifetime has passed since he found the expressive tools to become the thing he once admired from afar. He remains, indisputably, one of the defining artists of his or any other generation. But with 66 also comes the wisdom and perspective accrued by the business of living and loving. It’s not always easy. These require no less application. But like he says, the trick is to keep turning up. Long may he continue to do so.