Search - Paul Weller :: Paul Weller

Bit of Both Worlds

M. M. Kneppers | Utrecht, Netherlands | 12/29/2007

(4 out of 5 stars)

"Solid album with songs that sound like the 'new' Paul Weller and some that sound like the Style Council Weller. Foremost the songs are good.

"

Amazing, his best

J. Verkuilen | New York, NY United States | 10/18/2008

(5 out of 5 stars)

"I got introduced to The Jam by a high school friend (this would be late 80s). I vaguely knew about The Style Council but didn't connect the two, as Paul's never really made it in America. Then Weller did his solo album in the early 90s and I passed it by. Flash forward fifteen years. A friend of mine gave me a copy of Wild Wood and I decided I'd really missed something... or maybe I'd just grown into the music in the first place in the intervening years. Anyway, I've now gotten all of the Modfather's solo back catalog, along with a chunk of The Style Council (I still had my old Jam CDs).



It might be that the songs on this disk just perfectly fit my mood right now. It's a transitional album for sure, but I really feel it captured what those classic '70s soul albums I'd come to love over the last several years. Paul was going from the very jazzy/poppy Style Council to much more straight rock later and managed to land in the intersection between the two... right smack dab in the best of early '70s soul, which is some of the most vital music ever to come out of the rock 'n' roll songbook. One hundred years from now people will still be listening to Marvin Gaye and Al Green, and hopefully to Paul. It was as if Paul had a time machine that took him back to the headspace of "Let's Get Together," "What's Going On" or "That's The Way of the World," though the material is, of course, his own. I really love the production and instrumentation here. It's stripped down and totally fits the material."