Extreme Listening Mode!

When asked if he minded being called the Modfather, Paul Weller once replied “Well, it’s better than being called a cunt, ain’t it?”. When we told some of our friends we were going to see the old soulboy, opinions certainly seem divided straight along these lines. So it was with an open mind that we trekked out to deepest darket Motherwell to see the man to make up our own mind once and for all.

The crowd was a refreshing mix of middle-aged mods and their girlfriends and, despite the football match that at least half of Glasgow had gone to Manchester to watch, it was pretty fulsome (this tour sold out almost immediately, but circumstances meant that tickets for this show have been pretty easy to pick up for the last few weeks).

He certainly looked every inch the Mod as he took the stage with his ridiculously over-straightened feather cut, black button-through shirt and cream drainpipes. He kicked off with a couple of newer songs, but it was only on the third song, the rollicking “From the Floorboards Up” from his well received last studio album As is now, that the crowd really took notice. This opening set the tone for the rest of the 2 hour set, with a pretty even mixture new and old solo songs, and a couple of Jam songs (Butterfly Collector and Eton Rifles), which were met with the understandable rapture.

Other highlights of the set included the new single “Have you made up your mind”, which has the air of a proper soul standard, the unlikely anthemic sing-a-long of “Wildwood”, and “Whirlpool’s End” segueing into a stomping version of The Who’s “Magic Bus”.

As people have come to expect from Mr Weller, the band was incredibly tight, with the ubiquitous Steve Craddock on guitar and the notable inclusion of Gem (out of Oasis) on keyboards. (Notably absent were Steve White on drums and Damon Minchella on bass, who are apparently busy recording an, ahem, acid jazz record). Weller himself is an incredible presence on stage, and his honey-over-gravel vocals benefited from the excellent sound in the venue.

That said, the set was two hours, and 26 songs, long, so there was a fair share of dad rock in there, and it fell a little flat in the middle, as an acoustic set slowed the pace down. The newer stuff sounded just that, untested in the live arena, and this lack of polish did not stand up well to the older stuff, which he, and crowd, belted out with comfort and ease.

So, at the end of the gig, do we side with Noel Gallagher or PW’s old pal Poalo Hewitt? Here at ELM, we tend to take people as we find them, and love him or loathe him, you can’t deny the talent and drive of the man. The Modfather it is then.