Paul Weller

HOB, Boston

October 6, 2017

Paul Weller is touring behind his latest disk, A Kind Revolution. True to the title, he eschews the currently popular, strident expression of viewpoint, in favor of an eclectic, career spanning set of impeccable, politically aware rock. He avoids co-opting the stage as bully pulpit. He hardly addresses the crowd directly at all. He weaves his concerns and observations into his lyrics and leaves it at that. My Ever Changing Moods was an early Style Council highlight and could easily have doubled as the subtitle for the setlist. Live, almost every tune invited loose limbed dancing.

He doesn’t shy away from the new disk. One Tear moves back and forth from moody late period Bowie croon to scratchy, Let’s Dance groover while giving an apparently disinterested God a funkified chiding:

I don't want your kind of gods
That divide us
Blood stain traces
Lyin' to the races
If God is real
Then show your face
I can't find it

She Moves with the Fayre rides a James Brown Get Up guitar groove over a wash of synths. The Cranes are Back’s lilting melody casts for hope in a kind revolution against the odds of an often ugly world. Woo Se Mama ratchets up the guitar and B3 patch to warn against losing sight of what is important. The Impossible Idea waltzes in a woozy three four about what love might accomplish. And those are just four tunes from the new disk.

I have to admit that in real time I felt the same way about The Jam’s mutation into Style Council as I felt about Bowie’s move from Diamond Dogs to Young Americans: Wtf? I still don’t want to listen to YA’s or SC in their entirety, but, cherry picked, I’m down with that. The muscular arrangement on My Ever Changing Moods kicked the originals sweet northern soul out onto a fast dance floor. Have You Ever Had it Blue braised on the back burner. Shout To The Top had spent time at the gym.

Of course, a few more Jam songs wouldn’t have hurt. That said, Weller didn’t feel a need to drop them during the proper set. Instead, he distributed them across the three encores. Two of the three came from Sound Affects. Monday lands in the acoustic set. The arrangement emphasizes the universality of “waiting to see you again”. Start! struts it Beatles on new wave feel with strut and that irresistible “If I never ever see you” call and falsetto response refrain. Finally, the B3 teases Heatwave and the band, Weller and the crowd get all lined up in a rockin’ tough times but hopeful Town Called Malice.

Weller’s musical changes are certainly not as radical or ground-breaking as fellow former Brit Mr. Bowie’s. Nonetheless his restless muse juggles and mixes punk, soul, funk, electronica, psych, vignettes and sea shanties with equal aplomb. His genius lies in his old school, Brill-like mastery of composition, lyrics, arrangements and styles. The easy-going but tremendous ability to control the arc of a very long show with a notable lack of gimmicks highlights this perfectionism. Weller’s a songwriter with a capital “S”. Thirty-two tunes and three encores later the sweaty crowd melted out into Indian Summer on Lansdown Street.