PAUL WELLER
Illumination
Yep Roc/Outside
· Includes contributions from the mighty soulstress Carleen Anderson, Kelly Jones of the Stereophonics and Steve Craddock of Ocean Colour Scene.
Having never truly reconciled one of the ultimate ’80s pop-wanker conundrums – whether The Style Council or the angst-driven Jam was the most "real" – I thought one day Paul Weller’s solo career would make the whole question moot.
Enlisting the help of many, most notably mega-naughty bad-boy frontman Noel Gallagher, Weller has stripped his sound bare on Illumination, apparently looking for a more raw, honest sound. The result is an album that is pleasing yet at the same time oddly lacking in substance (kind of like that whole "Style Council versus The Jam" debate).
With Joe Strummer and Joey Ramone gone, Weller is one of the last men standing from that glorious punk epoch of the late ’70s, so maybe now more than ever, expectations of his solo career are abnormally high. The best thing about Weller has always been his lyrical touch, his ability to take on the world and still come out alive in the end, battered, unbowed and whistling.
This talent is present on Illumination – lyrically he’s in solid form, and "Bullet for Everyone" is confirmation of his wry poison-penmanship – but what’s lacking lies in the arrangements. Stylistically, Illumination is just too blah, too half-caf-decaf, too destined to appease. Weller’s first two solo albums – Traffic and Wild Wood – were fuelled by his legendary "fuck off" mentality, likely aimed at anyone who took issue with him in the late ’80s. Yet it was his hybrid of the very mod Who-redo in the midst of the Seattle wasteland that shot him back into the fore with music fans. It also proved that the successes of his former musical enterprises were no fluke.
Illumination alludes to those formative solo days, but the trouble with the record is Weller’s reliance on balladry and the dreaded singer-songwriter enterprise. It weighs down this album with a mopey aftertaste.
Considering the current dearth of talented musicians, it’s no wonder that this album seems to be generating so much interest. By all accounts, it’s a nice, lyrical, pleasant and unobtrusive album. It doesn’t fit so well on the back of Paul Weller – 2000’s Heliocentric seemed more impassioned and slightly more abrasive than Illumination. While aged fans will no doubt rail against such description, fans looking for the meaty, beaty, big and bouncy Weller will be disappointed.
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