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Towards the percentages, Paul Weller has entered a liberating new inventive part over the previous decade or so. As soon as the unchanging man, obstinate model chief for rootsy Actual Ale Rock, the previous Jam and Type Council frontman has broadened his sonic horizons considerably on latest albums, making among the most adventurous and kaleidoscopic music of his lengthy profession. Embracing lavish orchestration, experimental soundscapes, left-field collaborators and digital textures, Weller appears to have lastly twigged that the nice flowering of 60s pop gave him a set of instruments, not guidelines.
Titled to mirror his upcoming landmark birthday, 66 sports activities a hanging Pop Artwork cowl portray by 91-year-old legend Peter Blake, his first for Weller since 1995’s Stanley Street. Lyrical and musical company embody Noel Gallagher, Bobby Gillespie, Suggs and Richard Hawley; there are sufficient acquainted faces right here to reassure Weller traditionalists. However 66 additionally prominently options youthful skills together with French art-pop producer Christophe Vaillant, digital composer and string arranger Hannah Peel, and Brooklyn vocal trio Say She She.
Confirming Weller’s long-time function as unofficial uncle to the Gallagher brothers, Noel makes a vocal cameo on blues-rock chugger Jumble Queen, essentially the most typical monitor right here.
However the Modfather at all times had extra musical widespread floor with their Britpop rivals Blur, a comparability that has solely deepened as Weller’s latter-day albums leaned extra into wistful, craving, grainy-voiced English chamber-pop. There are definitely Blur-ish moments scattered throughout 66, from the tenderly crooned, evenly digital psych-pop ballad Flying Fish, to the beautiful Nothing, a jazzy romantic pastoral that feels like Damon Albarn channelling Curtis Mayfield.
High quality ranges are persistently excessive, with chic finger-picked folk-pop reveries like I Woke Up nestled alongside luxurious, harp-kissed, Bacharach-sized chansons like Rise Up Singing and Glimpse Of You. On the lushly orchestrated fairground-pop waltz My Greatest Pal’s Coat, Weller’s melismatic warble hits Marc Almond-ish ranges of torrid melodrama at instances. In the meantime, the reverb-drenched avant-doo-wop swooner In Full Flight is likely one of the most interesting, and strangest, issues he has ever recorded.
From suburban Woking to the farther fringes of the pop cosmos, Weller’s stunning however very welcome space-rock odyssey continues.
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