Woking’s finest returns with his own lockdown LP after 2020’s acclaimed On Sunset, and this 16th solo LP is a fun bag bursting full of catchy melodies and fabulous toe-tapping pop tunes. Always producing something different on each release and never standing still, Weller has gone back to go forward here, with a pocketful of perky numbers artfully put together, from the electro-pop synth of opener Cosmic Fingers to the glam-rock number True with an added psych jazz trumpet and sax middle eight, co-written and performed with Lia Metcalfe of the Liverpool band The Mysterines. The title track is a delightfully odd, shuffling humorous nod the genre itself, Fat Pop is like an old friend “Who hangs your dreams out every night, and wakes you up with sweet delight. Who’s never ever let you down? Who’s always there when your life is down? Fat Pop!” with jazz guitar and clarinet solo. Shades of Blue has a piano part and bass line that echoes Penny Lane, Glad Times is a passionate string-rich love song, Cobweb/Connections is an acoustic strum that could have come from the early ‘Andy Warhol’ Bowie era, Testify plays catchily with 70s funk with flute and gospel-style choruses, and That Pleasure has a syncopated rhythm reminiscent of his punk roots and The Clash. And on it goes capped by the gloriously beautiful closing track Still Glides The Stream which refers to a man “who knows what his public needed”. Joined variously also by Andy Fairweather Low, Hannah Peel and Paul’s daughter Leah, it is as if Weller has written an album that is a tribute to the genre itself – a tour of styles in a masterfully catchy package. He’s clearly been enjoying himself. Let’s hope there’s also a volume 2 to come. Out on Polydor
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