THE MAN FROM THE JAM
RETURNS WITH AMBITIOUS NEW SOLO ALBUM
After a three year recording hiatus - during which he played historic concert series in NYC and LA devoting one evening each to his Jam, Style Council and solo catalogs, and earned Lifetime Achievement honors at the 2007 Brit Awards - Paul Weller returns on June 24 with his ninth solo album, 22 Dreams (Yep Roc).
22 Dreams is a complete flowering of every musical impulse this artistic polymath has previously hinted at, and then some: rock, funk, soul, freak folk, free jazz, Krautrock, classical, spoken word, electronica and beyond. "I've never understood the need to put music into boxes," says Weller. "I could listen to Debussy one minute, then some avant-garde jazz album, then Curtis Mayfield the next. To me, it all comes from the same source."
The new album was co-produced by Weller and Simon Dine (Adventures in Stereo) and recorded at Weller's own Black Barn Studios in Surrey. Weller co-wrote the album's first single, "Echoes Round The Sun," with Oasis' Noel Gallagher. Other guests include Blur guitarist Graham Coxon and modern day mod Little Barrie. 22 Dreams concludes with a four-song suite, which flows seamlessly from stark spoken word of "God" - co-written with ex-Stone Rose Aziz Ibrahim - to the mellotron and moog experiment "111" ("I've never done anything as full tilt as this," says Weller), to the wistful acoustic stomp of "Sea Spray," before concluding with the six minute instrumental "Night Lights," another experimental track which deploys everything from tabla and tape loops to the sounds of an electrical storm which rained down, serendipitously, during the final sessions for the album.
Paul Weller will tour the U.S. later this year.
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