Toppermost of the poppermost: Paul Weller’s Fat Pop

Another year, another Paul Weller album. That might sound wan-with-care but is anything but. For today sees the arrival of Fat Pop (Volume 1), the Woking Wonder’s fourth album in as many years (and 16th solo release in 29 years) and you have to wonder how he does it. 

I could, easily, just rewrite my intro from just last July, when On Sunset, Album 15, came out: “It's actually become boring to talk about Paul Weller’s rich vein of form. Because, for a purple patch, it's been going on a mighty long time.” But I won’t. We can all cite musicians into their fifth decade of productivity churning out poor quality albums featuring lazy retreads, standards, ropey covers or half-baked collaborations with their chums, which they end up hawking on The One Show. Even so-called legends. Weller, on the other hand, continues to churn out records with the same rapidity as Nissan produces Qashqais in Sunderland, but without any breach whatsoever in standards. In fact, I can’t think of any one of his 16 studio albums as a solo artist that you could ask, timidly, “Was that wise, Paul?”

That Fat Pop (Volume 1) is an album of 12 songs is also testament to the restless creative soul that Paul Weller is. No sooner had he got On Sunset saved on the hard drive, he already had the basis of “four or five” new songs stored on his phone. With lockdown enforced, and his beloved touring off the cards for the foreseeable future, he took himself off to his Black Barn studio in Surrey to work on the basics of the new album on his own, gradually bringing in regular cohorts like guitarist Steve Cradock and bass player Andy Crofts to overlay their parts, effectively by e-mail. 

“It was a bit weird not being together,” says Weller, “but at least it kept the wheels rolling. I’d have gone potty otherwise.” By the time lockdown restrictions were easing last summer he was able to get everyone together at Black Barn to finish recording. This wasn’t, however, an exercise in T-crossing and I-dotting, but an opportunity to truly coalesce the concept that had emerged of a dozen “fat” pop songs. Such was their “strength and immediacy” that, at one point, there was the idea of progressively releasing each track as individual singles before putting out the album. The idea was eventually dropped due to practicalities but, says Weller, “I quite liked the idea and every song does stand up as a single, I think.”

Picture: Sandra Vijandi

On paper, it’s hard to know what to expect from that premise, but as you listen you quickly become accustomed to the abruptness of each track. Fat Pop? Fat-free more like: there’s no filler here. Each three-minute entry has a vibrancy, every one delivering a statement of Weller’s restless creativity, of his disparate tastes and application of it. It’s a veritable compendium of pop music, whatever that is (frankly, whatever you want it to be). It fizzes and scampers over stabs of pop, nu-funk and old soul, flitting from the Ian Dury-like synth punk of Cosmic Fringes to the summery, hand-clapping ease of the title track - Weller’s personal favourite on the album - which is reminiscent of Long Hot Summer, but refreshed with a Westway-flavoured dub beat. 

On Shades Of Blue - the single Weller premiered on The Jonathan Ross Show (with daughter Leah on backing vocals, spookily recreating the beauty of her mother, Dee C. Lee’s voice) - he mines his gift for concise, English soul. Its choppy piano and joyous chorus harks back to The Kinks and Small Faces - even the press release describes it as: “A classic three-minute English pop kitchen sink drama”, co-written with his daughter. It is probably one of my favourite of all the tracks he's produced during this run of albums.

Another gem is Testify, one of the tracks recorded in full and live at Black Barn and featuring the legendary Andy Fairweather Low. It’s a bright, boppy beat of a tune, possessing just the right amount of power to fit the album’s pop remit without straying into classic rock. “We had actually done it live two or three years ago,” says Weller, “but while I loved the groove I never really got a grip on the song.” Then, just before lockdown, he played a charity gig in Guildford, performing some Stax songs with Fairweather Low and they just gelled. “Our voices sound so good together and he’s such a lovely fellow, so I sent him the backing track. As soon as lockdown was lifted he came down to the studio for the afternoon. We cut it live and that was it.”

On Moving Canvas, a song about Iggy Pop, Weller gets choppy with a riffy stomper that he predicts will be a great track live, especially with the middle eight offering all sorts of potential for extended guitar and Hammond organ wigouts that would extend the song way beyond the album version’s run time of just under 180 seconds. The album’s final two tracks, which perfectly underscore the importance of good programming when doing a track listing, also bring out the gift Weller has for understated emotion. For a man so often depicted - still - as the stony-faced angry young mod of his Jam days, he has always been able to apply layers of texture to his songs. 

Picture: Universal Music

In Better Times is the perfect example. With its dreamscape chorus, it is Weller addressing anyone going through personal trauma: “It’s me talking to a young person who is going through something, addiction or mental health pressure, or whatever, and just saying ‘it’ll be alright’. Just get through this bit and there’ll be better times to come, you’ll look back and you’ll see it differently”. It is beautifully weighted.

As is the track that ends the album, Still Glides The Stream, a collaboration between Weller and Steve Cradock with a soaring chorus, orchestral strings and brass and a vague resemblance in the verse to the Stones’ Ruby Tuesday. Evolving initially via an e-mail back-and-forth between the two musicians, it evolved into an unintended, but still-heartfelt tribute to the unsung heroes of the last year. “In my mind, I was thinking about our road sweeper who’s a lovely fellow,” says Weller. “I started thinking that there’s so many people in this country who form the infrastructure of it and without whom we’d be fucked. But they’re looked down upon, not really noticed. So I was imagining their story.” It concludes an album conceived in lockdown, partially recorded out of it, and then released as we emerge from another, blinking into the daylight, slowly and gradually. 

There have been so many new releases recently made in much the same way, and perhaps with the same effect of providing the bright, sunny hope of normality and life returning. Paul Weller, canny lad that he has, has brilliantly tapped into that need, producing an album not of lengthy, chin-scratching complex noodling, but brisk, direct songs that put a smile on your face. Isn’t that what pop music should be about?