Personally, I thought dismissing the work of a 50 year old Mod revivalist would be a piece of piss, especially given the fact that he’s been requesting the same haircut for the best part of four-decades, but on this kind of evidence, it would be nigh on impossible to launch any prosecution at all. It kicks off with the snare shaking, bone rattling organ grinder, ‘Moonshine’ before shooting off on the kind of trajectory more commonly associated with small, flying mouse-like creatures out of hell.
To be fair, there’s few who can pull a rusty old scooter out of the garage and have it growl as convincingly as it did in sixties Margate. It’s one thing revisiting old haunts, its quite another pumping fresh blood and energy into them and having them rattle with the same passion and intensity as a brothel packed with 16-year male virgins. At 50, Weller is as angry and as vital as he was when he storming the Top of the Pops studios with a Rickenbacker in one hand and an incendiary pack of Stax vinyl in the other. ‘Wake Up The Nation’ proves he can still put cracks in the pavement by just baring his teeth whilst the terrifically uplifting ballad, ‘No More Tears To Cry’ proves he can out sob even the saddest of sixties-retro.
It’s a punkish, psychedelic beast, ‘Andromeda’ and ‘Whatever Next’ letting in more water than even Traffic’s ‘Hole In My Shoe’ but it’s the fizzy, belligerent acid-trip of a Ziggy era Bowie rather than the poncey, spaced-out whack of folks like ELO. Even when he’s stoned the dude’s got attitude.
Although sprawling and elusive at times (as most good road trips are) moments of lucidity abound and the generation-hopping, style-jumping diversions of ‘Trees’ makes it one hell of a beautiful ride.
It’s a bit like life itself really: there are moments of thunder and moments of calm, times of fury and times of tenderness and Weller has the depth of experience to recognise elements of all in each. ‘Rage, Rage against the dying of the light’, sang Dylan Thomas as he raced around Brighton Prom on his roaring Lambretta scooter. A true genuis can still reinvent himself even in very old pair of underpants.
That this is the first Weller record in years to feature his old bass-licking sidekick, Bruce Foxton should provide some indication of where all this is heading. It’s a wheel turned full circle kind of thing. A waking up in a flair flapping, collar-feeling 1973 Life On Mars thing. One thing is for sure though, Weller is unlikely to go gently into this goodnight.
