Reviewed by Ian Phillips.
By Paul Weller, Warner Music 2019.
In October 2018 Paul Weller performed two shows at The Royal Festival Hall with the London Metropolitan Orchestra.
The second of these shows was recorded and filmed and this release has now seen the light of day.
The concert was 25 songs in length and spanned his entire career.
The album features 11 songs from his magnificent True Meanings album which was released last year as well as several tracks from his days in The Jam, including a radical re-working of Private Hell from their 1979 album Setting Sons and a brilliant version of Boy About Town.
He also revisits his Style Council work with Have You Ever Had It Blue and A Man Of Great Promise.
I have been a Paul Weller fan since his Jam days and I’ve always enjoyed his clever lyricism and the fact that he has not been afraid to reinvent himself.
His solo career has been characterised by a willingness to move across genres and explore a variety of musical forms.
The concert was a resounding success with outstanding sound and Paul’s voice as rich and strong as ever.
Along with Paul’s regular touring band and The London Metropolitan Orchestra he was joined on his track, Books, by three Indian musicians, Sheema Mukherjee, Kamalbir Nandra and Tofail Ahmed playing respectively the sitar, tanpura and Indian violin.
One thing I noted about the album was how understated the orchestra was.
It was a nice change from other similar concerts that I’ve heard where the power of the orchestra dominates the performer.
Credit for this must surely go to conductor/arranger Hannah Peel.
If you haven’t got some Paul Weller then this is a good way of getting a good cross-section of his work.
The recording quality is as good as much of his studio work.
