Paul Weller may be something of a cult artist in the United States, but in his native UK and across Europe, he’s a well-deserved living legend. As a founding member of the Jam in the 1970s and the Style Council in the 1980s, he has taken listeners on a journey through punk, soul, jazz, folk, and whatever other styles he likes to try. Live settings are a great way to experience Weller’s music, usually because they put his electrifying on-stage presence on full display, allow him to cherry-pick some of the best songs from his long and varied career, and give him a chance to test out unique and surprising covers. Weller at the BBC, Vol. 2 accomplishes all of this in spades.
While Weller at the BBC was released in 2008 and covered the years 1990 to 2008…
Tag Archive: Paul Weller
…The 10-track album includes rarities, deep cuts and B-sides, including blistering six-minute closer “I Work in the Clouds”.
“There have been few artists who have had a career quite like Weller’s – not least in his stunning move into kaleidoscopic experimentation in his middle age.
After last year’s impressive 66, he’s now returned with Find El Dorado, a covers album that’s much more than that: a “deeply personal new album of reinterpretations”, it shines a light on some of Weller’s own favourite songs, from the well-known – The Kinks’ “Nobody’s Fool” to the Bee Gees’ “I Started a Joke” – to the obscure – especially “Lawdy Rolla”, by French studio group The Guerillas.
To mark the new record, we’ve put together,…
In a TV title sequence, former pop heartthrob Adam Faith, in a faded denim jacket and a feathered barnet, grabs an unattended black briefcase off the back seat of a parked limo and scarpers. But what’s this? Faith trips, the briefcase falls open and its payload of lovely lolly is cast to the winds – a low-rent callback to the denouement of Stanley Kubrick’s classic track-heist noir, The Killing.
The predicament of Faith’s character – Ronald “Budgie” Bird – is made more wretched by the show’s theme song, a mournful dirge voiced by a none-more-enervated singer who may or may not be The Kinks’ Ray Davies (the theme was released under the act name Cold Turkey in 1972) – although if it’s not him, it’s a good impression. Davies certainly wrote the tune,…