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  1. 2023/4 Albums Thing 406 - Paul Weller “True Meanings"

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    Here is the point where I stopped buying Weller’s albums on vinyl, or any other format.  OK I’d only bought the last one and this one on vinyl but once again this is very lacklustre stuff, and that’s being really kind to it. Albums these days aren’t cheap and I’m not gonna keep shelling out for endless half arsed records when I can “try before I buy” at any number of streaming sites these days. 

    Again, reading through the track list I couldn’t mentally put a tune to any of them, which probably says more about how little I’ve played it. Bizarrely there is a track on here titled “Bowie” (an absolute dull-fest BTW). I always thought bits of Weller’s “Sonic Kicks” (probably the last album of his that I liked…2012 if you’d forgotten the timeline) had something of Bowie’s Berlin period about it. Add that to “Nova” from yesterdays “A Kind Revolution” which sounds like a Bowie outtake (Deb thought it was the great man when I played it to her!) and there is the feel of some of Bowie’s affected vocals about some of Weller’s singing (although I must add one of my other difficulties with Weller these days is I really don’t like what his voice has become). It appears Weller has developed a later in life appreciation of the Dame. And Tim Hardin too it seems as the following “Wishing Well” is a very poorly disguised rewrite of Tim’s “Black Sheep Boy” (which Weller has covered in the past FFS!).

    “True Meanings” though strikes me as Paul Weller attempting to make a Nick Drake album. It’s acoustic in nature and suffers from two distinct disadvantages when set next to what it aims to be…the songs aren’t even close to as good as Nick Drakes and Weller isn’t as good or interesting a guitar player. I’ll leave it there. I should just get hold of copies of his first 3 solo records and forget the future ones.

    I am also very aware that back in January 2023 when I announced that I was going to embark on this 2023 (now 2024) Albums Thing that I said “Be forewarned, there will be no bad write ups, it's my collection and I don't buy records I don't like !“ and I am certain that the past two entries may be considered bad write ups. Not so, let’s consider them being my expressing my disappointment in someone who I wish (and believe) could do much better…OK ?

    The whole album can be found here

    https://youtube.com/playlist?list=OLAK5uy_kbT3nTndXmyuDZOkOR-A0RJzWt3VJyids&si=8adeFrT6Y91CAKDK 

    pick a track yourself, they’re all much of a muchness…

  2. 2023/4 Albums Thing 405 - Paul Weller “A Kind Revolution”

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    I’ve had a love/hate relationship with Paul Weller ever since he split The Jam up. Apart from a handful of songs (and at least one of those is a re-recorded Jam demo!) you can keep the Style Council thank you very much. I loved his first 3 or 4 solo albums but after “Heavy Soul” his records have been so hit and miss I really don’t care for more than one or sometimes two tracks from each. I have a soft spot for “22 Dreams” and “Sonik Kicks” but since then his records have been so increasingly lacklustre I haven’t listened to a new release since “True Meanings” in 2018. If you’re not gonna make the effort Paul then I can’t be arsed either.

    As I’m a bit of a nerd and I love a list I’ve got all my records catalogued online, on not one one but two websites, on one of which you can put a score out of 10 for each track. 8’s, 9’s and 10’s are to me damn near or actually perfect, a 7 means it’s OK, nothing special just what you'd expect, 5’s and 6’s are just “meh”, they’re just there and anything under 5 well you may as well not have bothered recording it. “A Kind Revolution” has a couple of 6’s and everything else at 5 (and that’s being very lenient to one or two of them)…meh.

    When I looked at the track list before starting to write this the only track title I could mentally put a tune to was “Woo Sé Mama” and that only because I think it’s bloody awful (yet it still somehow manages to be one of the two better songs on here) ! Maybe he needs an editor as it seems like he keeps releasing almost anything he records without any time to consider “is this any good ?”. Maybe he needs to work with different people who can drag something else out of him. I don’t know but it’s a great pity to me that I no longer get excited about this guy, who soundtracked my teenage years, announcing a new tour or record. I live in hope that the fire hasn’t really gone out and he’ll make a blinding record one day but I fear that those days are far, far behind him.

    Hopper - https://youtu.be/V4pJMn053Wk?si=BBcxDflcU4SCnXmK

  3. 2023/4 Albums Thing 404 - The Waterboys “This Is The Sea”

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    My brothers favourite album (or at least I think it still is). It’s an album that marks the end of the “Big Music” period for The Waterboys, their next album was “Fisherman’s Blues” and that marked a whole new musical direction that I chose not to follow too closely.

    The song everyone will know is of course “The Whole Of The Moon”, a spectacular pop song and a #26 hit when originally released in 1985 and then re-released in 1991 (to promote “The Best of the Waterboys 81–90” compilation) when it reached #3.

    Just in case you only know The Waterboys from “The Whole Of The Moon” and “Fisherman’s Blues” let me assure you, The Waterboys could rock (see Mike Scott’s statement later). “Don’t Bang The Drum” hangs off a thunderous drum sound and a guitar that prime Banshees John McGeogh would have been proud of, “Medicine Bow” and “Be My Enemy” rattle along with a sense of desperation to make this the most impassioned performance you’ve ever heard.

    But there is of course shade among the bright light. We’d already heard “Old England” (along with “Medicine Bow”) on a Radio One session earlier in the year (I still have the recoding I made off the radio) and between that session and the albums release the lyrics changed. The part of the song on the album that now went “Evening has fallen, the swans are singing, the last of Sundays bells is ringing” on that BBC session had been “Hey Bob Maxwell I wrote you this song, About a funny old world that’s coming along…Many things are right but you’re all wrong” which, when you tie it to the rest of the songs lyric, is a pretty scathing take down of the (later) disgraced but notoriously litigious media tycoon. I guess nobody wanted the law suit that would inevitably follow.

    “Spirit”, “The Pan Within” and “Trumpets” give us the gentler more spiritual side of this album. It all comes to a crescendo on the title track. Those massed 12 strings are back from “A Pagan Place” but this time the closing song is more hypnotic than its predecessors strident build toward its end.

    Me and Deb went to see The Waterboys on a bill with Elvis Costello and Nick Lowe in 2018. I hadn’t seen them live since the late 80’s and the possibility existed that they could play a set full of songs I didn’t know at all. They walked out on stage, Mike Scott spoke “we’re The Waterboys, a rock & roll band” and BOOM straight into this albums “Medicine Bow”. There were a handful of songs I didn’t know but they included in their set “All The Things She Gave Me”, “A Girl Called Johnny” and “The Whole Of The Moon” (of course) from this “Big Music” period. It’s said Mike Scott can be “difficult”, but on that afternoon his Waterboys showed they’s still got it. 

    Old England - https://youtu.be/V4CPezSV198?si=LJ35obQQj-Z_bUYa