TRACK REVIEW: Paul Weller - On Sunset

TRACK REVIEW:

Paul Weller

On Sunset

9.4/10

The track, On Sunset, is available from:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HqtZcFrZDpU

GENRES:

Singer-Songwriter/New Wave

ORIGIN:

London, U.K.

The album, On Sunset, is available here:

https://paulweller.lnk.to/onsunset

RELEASE DATE:

3rd July, 2020

LABEL:

Polydor Records

TRACKLIST:

Mirror Ball

Baptiste

Old Father Thyme

Village

More

On Sunset

Equanimity

Walkin’

Earth Beat

Rockets

__________

ON this outing…

PHOTO CREDIT: Nicole Nodland

I wanted to review a music icon who seems to get cooler and better with age! Although The Modfather, Paul Weller, has changed his music through the years and is, perhaps, not as political as he once was, that does not indicate a lack of importance or urgency. In fact, his current album, On Sunset, is one of his finest latter-days recordings, and it has been celebrated by critics across the board! Before assessing the title track from the new album, I wanted to explore a few sides to Weller; bringing in a few interviews along the way, I feel it is important to get a better view of the artist and how he has changed; a little bit about him now and what defines On Sunset. One of the more noticeable aspects of Weller is his reinvention and, as I said, how he has differed from the early days. I first caught onto Weller’s music in the 1990s, when he was shaping bands like Oasis and really making an impact on the modern scene. Track back to the 1970s, and The Jam were one of the most preeminent bands of their time; writing songs that spoke to a generation and, with it, firing up fellow musicians with the power of the music. Look through the catalogue of Weller, and you can see that he never sits still. It is his passion for all kinds of music that means he can not rest and settle for one sound. Weller spoke with Pop Matters recently, and he was asked about that sense of evolution and restlessness:

“Over the next 30 years, Paul Weller established himself as one of the preeminent singers, songwriters, and performers in British rock history. Never one to follow a trend, Weller was usually leading the next sound. Following the success of his 1995 classic Stanley Road, Weller found himself as a lead influence on a whole new generation of bands led by Oasis and Blur.

When asked about the various changes in his career, from punk to soul, acoustic to guitar fuzz, Weller admits it comes from a selfish place, telling PopMatters that "I don't want to repeat myself, which is inevitable at times if you've done this for a long time. But as much as possible, I try not to repeat what I've just done. I try to move on, take it someplace different. I really do it for myself, to be honest with you, and I just have to hope other people like it and come with it." That quest for reinvention was the fuel behind his latest release, On Sunset”

“Weller credits his intense love of music as the driving force to keep experimenting with new sounds and moving forward. On his relationship with music now, Weller says, "I probably have a greater appreciation of it now than when I was a kid. But nevertheless, the inspiration from it, from the time I can remember to now is immense. That alone makes me still want to make music. I want to see if I can be as good as some of the people that influenced me”.

I could not mention Paul Weller and ignore politics. I think about the music he was creating with The Jam in the 1970s and I wonder whether the political landscape and malaise was worse than it is now. It is shocking to think that we might have a more contemptuous cabinet now than nearly forty-five years ago! If Weller was someone who put politics into the mix as a younger writer, it seems that, now, he is less keen to get involved with the charade and disaster that is British politics! That said, he is still pretty fired up and distressed by the lunacy that is unfurling in this country. I want to quote from an interview Weller gave to NME not long after the furore and controversy surrounding Dominic Cummings and his lockdown-breaking trip up the country:

“Weller’s fresh disdain for the political pantomime extends to the Dominic Cummings saga – “there’s one law for one and one for the other; when’s that been any different? Who’s had the 24-hour fucking bar forever; the only place you can still smoke indoors?” – and Boris Johnson handling the pandemic crisis like a clown juggling burning balls.

PHOTO CREDIT: Mike Lewis Photography/Redferns/Getty Images

“I’m no fan of any Tory quite honestly,” he says, down the phone from his Surrey lockdown, “but I don’t understand this thing where we’re waiting on the Prime Minister to tell us what’s going on because he’s not a fucking scientist or a doctor – how would he know? He only tells us what he’s been told by his medical boffins, so it’s a bit stupid to think he’s got all the answers; he’s a politician. It is what it is, and where it’s come from and where it’s gonna go to no-one knows, evidently. We’ve just gotta wait it out and try to carry on as best we can”.

“Weller had been one of Jeremy Corbyn’s more vocal supporters in the music world, playing the first Concert For Corbyn in 2016 as the Labour party leader’s groundswell of support grew. Has a recent leaked Labour report – alleging that members of the party conspired to undermine Corbyn amid the 2017 election and beyond – convinced him Labour isn’t just a non-socialist party but actively anti-socialist?

“It’s a complete shit-show,” Paul sighs. “A similar thing has gone on now with the whole ‘Protect our NHS’ thing, which they’ve been trying to sell off for the last 40 years. The NHS was built on very, very decent socialist principles after the War, along with education, the welfare society and a lot of things. They were all based on decent socialist principles and people would be well-advised to remember that.”

Paul Weller is sixty-two now and, whereas other artists of that age might be content with settling back and not trying to shape the scene, for Weller, he is always striving to make a change and leave his mark! It is testament to an artist who is in his sixth decade as a recording artist and, in my view, is one of the most consistent and important artists of all time. What I love about On Sunset – among other things – is that it is an album that wants to affect the listener and has passion at its heart, even though the sounds and songs are very different in tone compared to the work of The Jam and The Style Council.

If Weller’s fifteenth studio album can be encapsulated into a few words, I would say that it is a huge influencer burning bright and proving that he is among the most creative artists out there. I think artists are responsible for helping shape the way we think and having a real role on the listener. It is almost like the influence of a teacher or parent in terms of informing us and shaping our perception of the world. I have listened to the On Sunset album a few times, and I definitely came away feeling very different to how I felt before hearing it – it was a stunning listening experience. Weller was asked (in the NME interview I have just sourced from) about his age and whether it was his role to challenge people and change music:

“Yes I do,” Weller says, “and I think that’s the role of any artist in whatever form. I always thought that is one of the beautiful sides of it all. So I would like to think that I can still do that but I also do it from the point of view that I really want people to come with it – as opposed to The Style Council when I was just putting everyone’s back up and enjoying it, which is a bit weird. I don’t do it from that standpoint anymore, but I always still follow my own instincts and hope people will like it and come with it”.

In terms of sounds and sonic colours on his latest album, I can definitely hear shades of The Beatles. That is no surprise, as Weller has always been inspired by the band, and you can hear elements and splashes of The Beatles on The Jam’s music. Whilst the music of On Sunset might be mellower than his past work, I think it is a beautiful album filled with richness – some of his best modern tracks can be found here. I am fascinated by The Beatles’ continued role in Weller’s life and music, and how it presents itself on his latest studio album. I feel, as I said, quoting from the man himself is relevant in the sense that we get a better impression of On Sunset, and what was in Weller’s palette.

As he told GQ, The Beatles are present and correct on his new record:

“You only had to listen to the opening bars of “Start!”, the post-punk mod masterpiece The Jam released in 1980, to realise Paul Weller had no qualms about wearing his heart on his sleeve. So what if he borrowed the riff from The Beatles’ “Taxman”. What were you going to do about it?

Weller’s obsession with the Fabs can be heard all over his new album, his 15th, On Sunset, a record that seems to push into the future while darting back into the past with wild exactitude. You can hear the strains of another George Harrison song, “My Sweet Lord”, in title track “On Sunset” and delight in the vampy Abbey Road piano on “Equanimity” and “Walkin’”. Not that this is in any way a criticism, as the defining characteristic of this new record is melody, something Weller still finds easy to capture after 40 years in the game.

“Everybody likes a good tune, regardless how it’s dressed up,” he says. “Luckily, melody comes relatively easy to me – it’s a very natural part of the writing process. You’re often trying to find new ways of saying the same thing, but I can always rely on melody to see me through”.

On Sunset is an album that looks forward and has a very different feel to anything he has recorded before, but there are myriad musical influences that give proceedings a very diverse feel. The range of musical textures and sounds that run through the album is stunning. I did say that On Sunset is a modern and ‘now’ album, but there are also nods to the past, for sure. In the same GQ interview, the range of influences was noticed:

“You can hear Weller’s past all over On Sunset, as well as the past of others: Bobby Womack, Pharrell Williams, The Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band, Roy Ayers’ “We Live In Brooklyn”, Van Morrison’s Veedon Fleece, even a violin solo in the style of Slade’s “Coz I Luv You”. There is a lot of reflection, not least on the title track, which he wrote when visiting his eldest son in LA last year. “I stayed at this funny little hotel just off the Strip and while I’ve been to LA a lot, I hadn’t spent any time on the Strip for years and so it all came rushing back – the Sunset Marquis, the Rainbow... I couldn’t believe how quickly everything had gone. I love the West Coast: not the psychedelic Grateful Dead but The Beach Boys, especially the later period. Be warned, though, this isn’t my West Coast record”.

PHOTO CREDIT: Nicole Nodland

I listen to On Sunset, and it sounds like Weller had a great time recording it! That might sound axiomatic because, let us be honest, he would not release it if the experience was hell! More, I mean you can hear Weller enjoying every song and really getting something nurturing and fulfilling from it. Not to suggest that Weller’s early output was a more difficult process, but one can feel an ease and naturalness to On Sunset that resonates and connects. When Weller spoke with Surrey Life to discuss his album, he talked about the recording process:

“I wouldn’t say making music has got any harder. I think I’m actually enjoying the process and the writing a lot more now than I ever did before in terms of recording” he says.

“I have a great respect and appreciation for it and seeing how the finished songs are,” says Weller, who co-produced the new album with long-term collaborator Jan ‘Stan’ Kybert, whose long list of credits include working with the likes of Oasis, The Verve and Massive Attack.

“I wanted to do an album that was soulful and also had an electronic edge to it. Most of the songs on it are quite uplifting, and to me it’s a sunshine record,” he says”.

Whilst I have looked at the man himself and how his 2020 shifts slightly from his earliest material, I think it is important to look at lyrical themes and how his inspiration has shifted a bit – which I sort of alluded to when mentioning how he is less political now. Though Weller is by no means standing by the graveyard waiting to be buried – I could have phrased that better! -, it is inevitable that mortality and ageing would be on his mind, as it is with any artist who enters a certain stage of life. I think mortality is something each of us considers at some point or other and, whilst some artists would be reticent to talk about life’s progress and getting older in their material, I think that it is honest and healthy.

When Paul Weller was interviewed by The Times in July, the topic of age did come up:

“These days Weller is more comfortable addressing bigger issues — such as death. A song from the new album called Old Father Tyme is about, in his words, “Mortality, and acceptance that you are part of a cycle and not being afraid of that. The older I get, the more I try to stay in the now. We live, we move on, that’s just the way it is, man. Energy never dies, but if at the end of it we just go back into the cosmos, that’s fine with me. I’ll be happy to be a little atom, floating about.”

What about Heaven? “It doesn’t have to be the Pearly Gates. We’ve been given Heaven, which is Earth. If we choose to f*** it up and make it Hell, that’s our doing”.

One of the best things about an artist like Paul Weller is his prolific nature! His previous album, True Meanings, arrived in 2018, and Weller has released six albums since 2010! One cannot accuse Weller of being idle, and it is amazing to consider his stamina and never-ending influence! On Sunset is not an album made by a man who merely wants to put out another album and remain in the spotlight: his fifteenth studio (solo) album is a fresh chapter and stunning album from someone who has put his heart and soul into every track. I wonder why Weller gets more prolific as time goes on. Not that I am complaining, but it is amazing to think that a man who has been in the industry for so long still has so much to say! Not only is Weller’s putting out great music on a regular basis; every album is different, and one gets a new experience every time. A few years ago, Weller was interviewed by Gothamist, where he was asked about his prolific nature:

“You've always been pretty consistent in releasing new music throughout your career, but it seems like in the last decade, you've gotten even more prolific and experimental. Is there something that's different about your songwriting now? Do you feel like you've found another gear?

Mainly it's just the feeling of mortality. I don't know, maybe the older you get you think, "Fuck." You know, you look around and someone says, "25 years ago this record was out" or, "It's 40 years you've been making records." And you're just like, wow, it goes by so quickly. So I think there's an element of that: I've just got to do as much as I can. Time's running out. And time goes so quickly. I've got to keep writing and keep trying to produce work.

PHOTO CREDIT: Nicole Nodland

But then I think also in lots of ways the pressure is kind off really. I mean, apart from my own self-competitiveness, I'm not trying to compete with a market, you know. I'm not in competition with other artists. I suppose, because I've been doing it for such a long time, you kind of feel comfortable, this is what I do. And people either dig it, or not dig it. And that's fine. I think there's a pressure that gets taken off”.

I have talked about Weller being more prolific and inspired than ever; how he has changed styles and continues to put out brilliant material. I think a lot of that focus and energy has come from the fact that he stopped drinking, and he was helped and supported by his wife, Hannah. It sort of ties back to how prolific Weller has been over the past decade: he has been sober and, as a result, channelled a lot of himself in the music. When he spoke with The Times last year, he was asked about his sobriety and how that changed him:

“It was an ultimatum from Hannah, his (second) wife, 27 years his junior, that made him stop drinking. He had quite the industry reputation as a soak. In the mid-Noughties I used to see him in the basement bar of his record label, where, as a staff perk, every Friday from 5pm the booze was on the house for an hour. He’d arrive at lunchtime: “I’m here for the free bar.”

How has giving up changed him? “I’m just much clearer-headed and much more appreciative of what’s around me. Because with booze and drugs you get numb to a lot of things if you do it too much.”

Has it made him more creative? Some of his best albums have been made in this past decade. “I’m not convinced by that, I think you’re either creative or you’re not. I’ve never not done it [made music] because I’ve been drunk or on gear or anything. I’ve always had to work anyway, even just financially to

keep going, pay for everything”.

I think that it is time to get down to reviewing the title track from On Sunset. It is a song that I really love, and it is a shining jewel from an album that is spilling over with gold.

PHOTO CREDIT: Andy Crofts

I love Weller’s voice on the track, On Sunset. Before we hear him sing, there is some gorgeous acoustic guitar and beats that mixes with some woozy and ghost-like electronics that creates this heady mood. I was thinking about Weller cruising the streets down a Los Angeles strip; the wind blowing through his ample hair and thought heavy on his mind. The lyrics definitely enforce that impression, as the hero says: “I was gonna say hi/But no one there/There’s me forgetting/Just how long it’s been”. I am not sure whether it is an old friend on his mind, but the palm trees are swaying, and the breeze is blowing warmly. It seems like Weller wants to reconnect with someone, but maybe there is a bit of a past and a lot of history that needs to be tackled. Weller’s voice is rough and powerful as the song grooves and rolls on. I love the composition and vocal blend, and you get a real sense of location. The video is brilliant, and we see Weller driving in a convertible, as he muses and thinks things over. I imagine, when he sings of being on Sunset, he is referring to Sunset Boulevard, and that feeling of being around palm trees and a really evocative landscape. In the video, we see Weller checking his mirrors as, behind him, there is a boy riding a skateboard. It makes me think that he is contemplating getting older and addressing his past, or maybe he is reflecting on the past and how things have changed. In some ways, I can hear a bit of The Beatles’ In My Life (from Rubber Soul) in On Sunset. “And the world I knew/Has all gone by/All the places we used to go/Belong to a time/Someone else’s life/Another time” are interesting lyrics, and it is curious to speculate what has compelled Weller to think like this and think about the past.

PHOTO CREDIT: Jonathan Daniel Pryce

It is invariable that all songwriters will look at the world as it was and who they used to be, but there is such emotion and gravitas in Weller’s voice, it is hard not to be moved by it. Rather than the song being quite heavy and foreboding, there is an effortless cool in Weller’s delivery that makes On Sunset a song that offers as much hope and sunshine as it does deeper feeling. “No long goodbyes/I have no point to prove” our hero sings, and he takes a drink of whiskey and carries on. Even though Weller is in a reflective and contemplative state, he is being carried along by the sun and the breeze that continues to blow. I do love the composition as much as anything. We get that start of acoustic guitar and electronics, but then there are horns that come through and strings. It is like we are moving through different phases and scenes and, with it, there is a new soundtrack for each. The composition adds a lot of emotion and story to the song, and at the centre is Weller’s incredible voice! I think his voice sounds more impressive and impactful than it has ever done. Is On Sunset Weller driving in America and thinking about age and how life has changed, or is there something else at play? I have listened to the song a few times, and I sort of change my mind each time. I can sense a man that is surrendering to the beauty of the vista and weather, but it is clear that our hero has some things that he is questioning and pondering. Maybe mistakes have been made in the past. Perhaps Weller is noticing how the passing of time is not always a good thing. It might just be a single moment in time where the hero is letting his mind wander but, really, there is nothing to worry about. Whatever impression one gets, On Sunset is a moving and wonderful song from the album of the same name. It also goes to show that there is nobody in music quite like the iconic Paul Weller!

PHOTO CREDIT: Kmeron

I am not sure, as I say with every artist I am reviewing at this time, when Paul Weller can get on the road and bring the music to the people, but he has dates planned for next year, so go to his official website and you can find all the details. It is a pity that such a brilliant album like On Sunset will not get an airing on the stage before 2021. I actually wanted to take a slight detour before wrapping up, as Weller spoke with The Times last year about the changing role of men, his role as a father, and the #MeToo movement. It was interesting hearing Weller talk about masculinity and how things have changed since he was young:

“It’s a funny old time to be a fella, isn’t it, I begin.

“I think it’s good,” he counters. “It’s a transitional period. For a lot of men — any men that are vaguely conscious at all — they’ve had to reappraise themselves and masculinity. The gaps between men and women have got to be closer, in terms of pay and job opportunities. Everyone has to be on an equal footing. I think in the next five or 10 years, men will grow up differently. I hope so, anyway. That’s how the world gets better, how we evolve.”

His own upbringing, he says, was “a very macho sort of thing, but we live in a different time now. My own kids are very much more sussed. Our family is so mixed as well, we’re like a proper rainbow nation, so it might be different for us,” he adds, referring to the mixed heritage of his eldest two children and his eldest son, who is gay”.

That is a bit of an excursion, but I felt it important to bring it in, just to highlight another side to a brilliant artist. Make sure you listen to On Sunset – and buy it if you can -, as it is a remarkable album, and one of Weller best from the past decade. There is no stopping the man, and one can perfectly imagine another album arriving in the next year or two. He is definitely on form right now, and it is so wonderful to see! I shall leave things there but, having grown up listening to The Jam and Paul Weller, I am stunned that he is still putting out so original and interesting music. It is testament to a man who has a lot to say and is in a very good place right now. Long may that continue as, with Paul Weller in the world, we all feel…