For somebody with a restless creative spirit,
Paul Weller
has no quarrel with taking frequent strolls through his back pages.
An Orchestrated Songbook
finds the singer/songwriter plucking a number of softer tunes from throughout his career, then turning them over to
Jules Buckley
to arrange for the
BBC Symphony Orchestra
.
Weller
held the concert on May 15, 2021, releasing it as
later in the year, and as something of a companion piece to
Other Aspects: Live at Royal Festival Hall
, the orchestrated live album he released just two years prior. Where
Other Aspects
was designed to showcase 2018's
True Meanings
,
gives away its game with its title. It's neither an unveiling of new material nor a bunch of greatest hits but rather a cohesive collection of ballads and introspective numbers punctuated by an occasional bit of pop. Most orchestral rearrangements of pop/rock material veer toward the grandiose, so it's noteworthy that
feels intimate, the symphony acting as empathetic support to
's guitar and voice.
Buckley
's arrangements of
's canny self-curation help give
a subtle but palpable emotional resonance that separates it from other orchestral pop reworkings, not to mention the heavy number of
live albums. ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine