Paul Weller
Fat Pop (Volume 1) POLYDOR
Modfather-turned-stylistic polymath surveys his broad new sonic lands.
It’s testament to the invention and variety of his recent work that you fire up a new Paul Weller record in 2021 with absolutely no idea what you’ll be faced with. Of late there have been outings into motorik psychedelia (on 2012’s Sonik Kicks),
sprawling textural soundscapes (2015’s Saturns Pattern), stripped-back folk rock (2018’s True Meanings) and musique concrete montages (2020’s In Another Room
EP). Following the thread of amalgamation records from 2008’s experimental breakthrough 22 Dreams through 2017’s
A Kind Revolution to last year’s On Sunset
– which combined his latest avant-garde leanings with his core soul, folk, mod and funk roots – his fifteenth solo album, Fat Pop (Volume 1), further explores the territories he’s claimed as his own.
‘I’m on the cosmic fringes, I’ve never been or felt so at home,’ Weller declares on opener Cosmic Fringes, a catchy concoction of krautrock synth-pop and Scary Monsters industrial art rock, and there he remains for the first third of Fat Pop, elaborating on the album’s title with the cocky enthusiasm of a laptop prodigy. The marvellous, uplifting True
finds him lacing Ziggy’s more soulful glam with avant-garde horn riffs while he swaps jubilant harmonies and hand claps with Mysterines singer Lia Metcalfe, while the title track is more phat pop, venturing into Gorillaz’ psychedelic future funk enclosure declaring himself not just a rock of familial reliability ‘when the world is so dark’, but the new downbeat disco king ‘who brings the beat when the place is jumping?’
From there his roots begin to show through. Glad Times is golden-era lounge soul refracted through a dream; Shades Of Blue a mod-pop jig given a psych gospel overlay; Iggy Pop tribute Moving Canvas the sort of spaced-out Californian funk that conjures flashbacks to the 70s’ most widecollared acid flicks. But where once Weller might have merely wallowed on such gilded retro splinters, now everything has relevance. If the meaty, vaguely Pentecostal retro blaxploitation of Testify feels nice but unnecessary, its orchestrated sisterpiece The Pleasure resets the balance with subtle references to George Floyd and BLM. The sweeping 60s orchestrations of Still Glides The Stream make heroes of the streetsweepers and key workers keeping Britain on its feet in a crisis. There are hints of personal relevance too. The bliss-folk In Better Times is a message of support to a youth in distress, and the Tame Impalagone-glam Failed explores his self-doubt and inadequacy after a row with the missus.
Invention meets familiarity, fragility meets warmth, sensitivity meets strut. Weller’s never felt so at home. ■■■■■■■■■■