“Has there been a more remarkable late-career run than Paul Weller’s?” I can’t think of one, said Dan Cairns in The Sunday Times. Fat Pop, Weller’s 16th solo album, is “another beauty” in a glorious sequence that started with 22 Dreams in 2008, “stylistically and lyrically, the album roams far and wide, encompassing pop, reggae, blues, soul, balladry, polemic, whimsy and regret”. The title track is a “sinuous, clarinet-flecked, Ian Dury-like ode to music”. The “arch, self-mocking” Cosmic Fringes recalls early Roxy Music and Ziggy-era Bowie. And In Better Times is the “sonic equivalent of a sun-dappled walk along a meandering riverbank”.
This is Weller’s second album in less than a year, after On Sunset, said Ludovic Hunter-Tilney in the FT. And it ranges so widely across genres, it feels…
