![]() ![]() Working alongside Weller and Kybert was Weller's touring drummer Ben Gordelier – of The Moons – who played on just about all the songs. Not that I ever plan it but I always react a bit to what I've done last. It has a lot of movement in the record, there's something physical," he says. "It's not necessarily a dance album, but I wanted something with rhythmic drive. He wanted something with a bit of swing and space in it. Last year, 2014, he headed back into his regular recording haunt, Black Barn Studio in the Surrey countryside, to work on "Saturns Pattern," his follow-up to 2012's tour-de-force of cut-up pop-punk-kraut and abstract escapades "Sonik Kicks." Working alongside his regular sound-desk collaborator Jan "Stan" Kybert (Oasis, Bjork, Massive Attack, etc.) in the producer's chair for the first time, and with trusty engineer Charles Rees close at hand, he had a very different album in mind. Nobody writes songs as reliably and regularly brilliant as Paul Weller. It's always something that surprises sonically, that takes a fork in the road from his last work, but it's also something that always, always has the tunes to make the journey you're taking with him worth it. Instead he furthers his reputation as one of Britain's very greatest living musicians by doing what he's always done: heading back into the studio and making a new album. Think how much his huge public – one of music's most partisan and loyal – would love him to now tour The Jam's "Sound Affects," or The Style Council's "Our Favourite Shop," or his landmark album from the 90s Britpop era, "Stanley Road?" He could write his own fee.īut for Paul Weller, it would be like writing a retirement plan and that's the very worst thing he can think of. ![]() Paul Weller could score a different open-goal on the nostalgia circuit every year for the next two decades by playing a different one of his classic albums again. Nor does he rack up on the mantelpiece the critical acclaim he still receives for the five albums he made subsequently with the diametrically opposed (but still undeniably Weller-like) soul-jazz-funk-anything-but-rock Style Council, and eleven albums as a multi-award-winning solo artist since 1990. His life's mission to keep producing new music is never obscured by the mountainous critical accolades he's racked up after six era-defining albums with The Jam during that golden era for British music just after punk until they split in 1982 (thus ending the golden era). He's not content just to soak up plaudits for the influence he continues to assert after four decades of constant, questing musical endeavour. No, Paul Weller does not rest on his enormous laurels. ![]() "And why would I stop if making music is what I always wanted to do?" "What would I do if I stopped?" he asks rhetorically with a shrug, as if it's the silliest thing he's ever heard. He never stops dropping landmark recordings, nor striking out for new turf. ![]() They deposited their great work in the memory bank decades ago and now simply reap the accumulated interest from the old faithful each passing year. There are, let's be honest, a few great English artists who enhance their living legend status by not actually doing very much. ![]()
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