WHATEVER happened to Paul Weller? That's a question anyone but his mum could have been forgiven for asking just a few years back. After being the spokesman for a British generation 15 years ago with punk-mod band The Jam, then turning out pretentious cafe jazz with the Style Council, the boy from Woking all but disappeared.
The slump in his career began when his record label refused to release the final Council album.
Things hit rock bottom three or four years ago when, touring with the Paul Weller Movement, he was playing to audiences of a couple of hundred - a far cry from the days when The Jam filled Wembley Arena for a whole week.
But the good news is Weller's back. He has returned to his roots, and is producing some of the finest music of his career. Stanley Road, his third solo album, is possibly his most truly mod record yet, though his points of reference have expanded beyond the Small Faces and The Who.
The forced falsetto of the Style Council days has gone (thankfully), replaced by a throaty, mature Weller, sounding like a cross between Steve Marriott and Steve Winwood (the latter popping up to play some boogie woogie piano on Woodcutter's Son and Pink on White Walls ).
Mature is the word for Stanley Road (named after the road Weller lived on as a boy). It has a feeling of completeness missing from his work for some time. According to the artist, the album was recorded almost live - there were only one or two takes per track.
