66
By Paul Weller
Alongside Elvis Costello, Paul Weller is one of just a few from the British post-punk era with a proven capacity for successful reinvention.
With the Jam (1976-82) he initially tapped Mod culture but emerged as a distinctive social observer. In the Style Council (1983-89), he embraced cool European worldliness, jazz, balmy moods and offered the self-analysis of My Ever Changing Moods.
In his subsequent solo career, he has frequently returned to soul, folk, psychedelic rock, pastoral moods and, on the song The Changingman in 1995, addressed his need to shake things up when they became too comfortable.
In a musical life notable for critical praise, his 2020 On Sunset (the title track a wistful reflection on time passing: “the world I knew has all gone by”) and Fat Pop Volume 1 (2021) were career highs.
On 66, his 17th solo album, Weller opens with Ship of Fools, a flute further softening his reflection (“These high seas can be so cruel/when you’re trying to find your own way”), a mood picked up again in the philosophical Flying Fish: “A million stars/lift me up so far.”
Later, in A Glimpse of You, he sings, “I find a wooden seat where I can wait until the end of the world”, and with I Woke Up, he wonders aloud, “Within this realm of constant motion/I’m trying to find my role/in it all.”
Although this may sound like a retirement village soundtrack, the consistently interesting album also includes horn-driven rock (Jumble Queen), edgy guitar riffs (Soul Wandering, where he considers what lies beyond life) and wah-wah soul (In Full Flight, with “lately, I’ve been doubting it/not just one thing/but kind of all of it”).
There are also elegant dream-pop ballads in Nothing and the soulful Rise Up Singing, which recalls the Style Council.
On this pensive collection – with Noel Gallagher and Bobby Gillespie (both contributing lyrics), Madness’s Suggs and others – the 66-year-old changingman eloquently addresses ageing in another of his ever-changing moods.
Rubricator
By Sam Bambery
In a country that embraces idiosyncratic pop (from Split Enz to Tall Dwarfs, Princess Chelsea and Voom), Ōtautahi/Christchurch singer-songwriter Sam Bambery should have an in-house audience for the melodic folk-driven pop on this intelligent second album.
Immediately appealing are the wide-screen, Pasifika-influenced The Burnout with a wash of slide guitar as counterpoint to his lyrical anxieties, the casual backyard strum behind the equally expansive Life in Tandem and the delightfully quirky Doctor.
Bambery’s expressive and impressive vocal range – from intimate (Spring, Tricks of Light) through the uneasy shapeshifting stalk of Parasite to Jeff Buckley-like confessional art-rock on Mountain and Me and the dramatic Uncertain – carries these diverse, skilfully arranged songs which sometimes include seemingly random vocal samples. The final song is the DIY home recording of the dark Myself, Vindicated.
On the tiny Underunderground Records run by his friend Hannah Everingham – whose recent Siempre Tiene Flores is also worth attention – Rubricator confirms Sam Bambery as a real talent.
These albums are available digitally, on CD and vinyl (the Weller with additional songs).
