![]() Fat Pop (Volume 1) sparks with neural stimulation you can almost see, like swinging the doors wide at dawn. ![]() Philly soul strings materialise as the song both sharpens and expands, becoming kaleidoscopic, with a sense of travel and Euro-romance, a jet-set propulsion into adventure, that’s been hard to find lately. “I thought I lost you for a while,” “Glad Times” then worries, before drifting into a Seventies haze. If that’s the case, you too have a lot of enjoyment ahead. “True”, a duet with Lia Metcalfe from Liverpool’s The Mysterines, is a breezy strut, with ringing glam guitar. PAUL WELLER Fat Pop volume 1 (Universal) While this album has been out about a month now, maybe you missed it as I did in the flood of new and often extremely good releases 2021 continues to offer. “Fat Pop” focuses on music’s literally life-saving properties, Weller riding his own bass groove and adopting a deadpan voice recalling Ian Dury to enquire: “Who hangs your dreams up every night?/.Who’s been a friend when you really needed one?” “In Better Time” shows similar paternal concern, softly soaring into a chorus holding out hope to an imagined, lost young listener. “Is there not a moment you can cite?” he nudges. “Larks ascending,” Weller sings at the start of the sunny bustle of “Shades of Blue”, while “Cobweb Connection” beckons us down whichever back-road or riverside we find meaningful, those havens where happy memories lodge, curing despair. The pandemic this was made in is addressed by resisting and even rejecting it, with a crisp, spring hopefulness suiting the hopeful rebirth it’s released into. My particular highlights were the tracks performed from the Mercury Music Prize nominated Album. Each track sounds modern and distinct, with shape, space and edge, alighting on most of Weller’s modes. Fat Pop show cased Wellers ever changing musical direction. Productively sober since 2010, he’s looking sharp in every sense, alert and precise, and turning his Black Barn studio into a pop artisan’s workshop, producing crafted English pop almost round the clock.įat Pop (Volume 1) is his second album in a year, productivity which went out with The Beatles and the Stones, and its two- and three-minute songs also restore a lost art of concision second-nature during the pop single’s Sixties peak. Hannah Peel is back in the fray adding her classic string scores to Cobweb Connections and Still Glides The Stream.The alias fits these days, though, as the man who pulled the plug on The Jam with a brace of Surrey soul anthems then blew up The Style Council with a house album again exemplifies the Mod aesthetic. Andy Fairweather Low adds his distinctive vocals to superfly strutting Testify and Paul’s daughter Leah co-wrote and features on the classic 3 minute pop kitchen sink drama Shades Of Blue which will be the first single taken from the album. As some promising young songwriter once put it, What you give is what you get. ![]() It’s not hyperbole to state that this new album, titled Fat Pop (Volume 1), is among his most compelling. Paul Weller releases his 16th solo album since his self-titled debut in 1992, which comes in just under twelve months following June 2020’s magnificent, chart-topping On Sunset. The band reconvened at Weller’s Black Barn studio in Surrey when restrictions were lifted to finish the work with the shape of the album becoming clear to all.Īs ever, Fat Pop sees a number of guests contributing including Lia Metcalfe, the young Liverpudlian singer with The Mysterines who combines her tremendous vocal as well as a songwriting credit to True. What you can hear on Fat Pop is the reciprocation of that care. Paul Weller will not let us down when we need him most. This is a vinyl LP pressing of Fat Pop: Volume 1 by Paul Weller.Paul Weller releases his 16th solo album since his self-titled debut in 1992, which comes in just under twelve months following June 2020’s magnificent, chart-topping On Sunset. With many ideas for new songs stored on his phone, Paul started to record them on his own with just vocals, piano and guitar which he’d send to his core band members (drummer Ben Gordelier, Steve Cradock on guitar and bassist Andy Crofts) to add their parts.
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