Paul Weller - On Sunset

The Guardian 0

(Polydor)
The Changingman reveals his spiritual side on his funky, shimmering 15th solo album

When you think of Paul Weller, you do not picture him on Hollywood’s notorious Sunset Strip. Baked either by the sun or lurid neon, a tourist hell trading on successive eras of American nightlife notoriety – 40s gangsters, 80s hair metallers – it is not the sort of locale where anyone, let alone a scion of precision-cut, post-mod cultural rectitude, should find inspiration.

And yet his 15th solo album, On Sunset, finds the now 62-year-old Weller taking in the avenue on a visit to his son. The years dissolve around him. The Jam played the Whiskey a Go Go in 1977 – punk-enervated modernists sorely disappointed to find a California hippie pall clinging to the area.