This is Paul Weller’s second album of purely cover versions and is much improved on the first. Whilst 2004’s Studio 150 felt like a stop-gap of an artist trying to re-find their mojo, Find El Dorado, named after a song by Eamon Friel, sounds like an artist who just loves sharing great tracks and who continues to find new ways to express themselves. Unlike Studio 150 the album feels less like a rag-bag of Weller’s favourite tracks and more a map of his emotional and musical DNA.
Weller has always been known for his eclectic taste in music and his knowledge of deep-cuts and obscure releases, and these are scattered across this fifteen track album which many will listen to and fail to recognise a single track – that’s a good thing. The album offers a deeply personal set of reinterpretations drawing on a lifetime, well spent, listening and collecting songs like a folk-singer collects handed down stories.
The writers of Weller’s choice selections are a varied bunch, including Richie Havens, Robin Gibb, Clive Palmer, Christy Moore and The Guerrillas – but despite such a varied collection Weller makes them hang together, making them his own albeit infused with sounds you may not typically hear on a Weller album, the pedal guitar on Merle Haggard’s ‘White Line Fever’ (more commonly known as a The Flying Burrito Brothers track ) a proven highlight. Underlying many of the tracks is a sense of melancholia, enhanced by arrangements courtesy of Weller stalwart Hannah Peel.
First album single, Brian Protheroe’s beautiful 1974 hit single ‘Pinball’, is re-interpreted with deep evocative saxophone from Jacko Peake, and sadly all to short, whilst ‘I Started a Joke’ (Bee Gees) is scored by a lush Hannah Peel arrangement reminding you that the Gibb brothers really deserve far more credit as fine songwriters.
(Photo by Dean Chalkley)
Helping bring the album to life is a small cast of collaborators including Declan O’Rouke, Noel Gallagher and Seckou Keita. Robert Plant shares his distinctive vocals on the albums closing track, Hamish Imlach’s ‘Clive’s Song’, bridging the gap between both artists former bands and proving Weller and Plant as elegant vocal partners.
This might be Weller at his most reflective but don’t be fooled, chances are his next album will offer a new direction and a new chapter but for now Weller offers a genuine highlight of his recent solo career.
