With latest album 22 Dreams doing brisk business among those who always preferred the more soulful side of Paul Weller, the DVD release of Far East & Far Out seems prudently timed. Filmed on The Style Council’s debut excursion to Japan in 1984, this 55-minute recording of the band’s live set...
With latest album 22 Dreams doing brisk business among those who always preferred the more soulful side of Paul Weller, the DVD release of Far East & Far Out seems prudently timed. Filmed on The Style Council’s debut excursion to Japan in 1984, this 55-minute recording of the band’s live set provides a fascinating reminder of Weller’s chameleon-like passage through pop.
Emerging from the wings sans guitar and fronting a nine-piece soul band, Weller is unrecognisable from the brooding figure who felt he’d come up against a musical brick wall in the shape of final Jam album The Gift.
Instead, in a career swerve unseen since David Bowie’s transition from diamond dog to blue-eyed crooner a decade before, he leads the band through vaporous Philly soul (“Long Hot Summer”), jazzy instrumentals (“Le Depart”) and militant P-Funk (“Money Go Round”). Occasionally, he even smiles. The sense of a great weight having been lifted from his pastel-shirted shoulders is palpable. “Here’s One That Got Away” and “My Ever Changing Moods” are breezy exercises in bespoke pop, all neat edges and fine tailoring, while a spirited “Dropping Bombs On The White House” should make all you old-school Red Wedge activists go a little misty-eyed.
This new found sense of freedom and enthusiasm spills over into the band. It’s hard to imagine Rick Buckler tying a white kamikaze scarf around his head, playing a drum solo and then taking a bow centre-stage, but that’s exactly what a beaming Steve White does.
Not that these new musical horizons mean the past has been entirely forgotten. Delivered almost a cappella, “It Just Came To Pieces In My Hands” is a scathing dismissal of his tenure as “voice of a generation”, “I thought I was lord of this crappy jungle/I should have been put behind bars” he seethes, before adjusting his pullover and embarking on Booker T-inspired feet warmer “Mick’s Up”. As the sleevenotes to “Walls Come Tumbling Down” put it: “He’s back! Yes, and a changed person.”
EXTRAS: None.
PAUL MOODY