Although I’ve always admired Paul Weller’s music and of course his impeccable dress sense his releases are not usually found within these pages. Of course soul music has always been an influence on him but on ’22 Dreams’ he explores a vast array of styles resulting in a dream like sequence of flashing random thoughts which somehow flow in natural progression. The tracks which will appeal to readers of these pages however are his tribute to Alice Coltrane ‘Song For Alice’, an orchestrated deep jazz instrumental you’d swear was a long lost gem from the woman herself, ‘Cold Moments’ which combines acoustic pop-folk with a heavy dose of soul sway, the folk meets East End barrow boy sounding ‘Black River’ and ‘God’ with spoken word from Aziz Ibrahim having a talk with The Mighty One Above in heartfelt working class bloke kind of way. It’s out there but that’s the way I like it!
