| It's hard to bring any fanfare to a Paul Weller release these days, but Illumination speaks for itself, bringing together the past and future Weller like none of his solo work before. Producing the album himself (and playing most of the instruments), he's made Illumination sound like a celebration rather than an introspective vanity project. Songs such as the skyscraping "Leafy Trees" and "Standing Out in the Universe" are hard to imagine coming from his pen. Where the album fails is in the host of celebrity "friends" he's roped in on most of the tracks, which serve to dilute rather than enhance the songs; turning the album into a Jools Holland-esque novelty record rather than a collaboration. It works with garage and hip-hop, it fails with rock. Noel Gallagher, Kelly Jones, guitarist Aziz Ibrahim--the personalities are too big for the songs and their presence too overwhelming (particularly Jones, a man who used to write good records himself, who wrote the lyrics to and actually sings the pedestrian "Call Me No. 5"). The remarkable "It's Written in the Stars" is a revelation, however, sounding like it was actually written after a few glasses of good wine under the Mediterranean stars--and most of the rest of the album follows its lead. "Who brings joy?" he sings on the song of the same name, and for once, Weller is the answer to his own question. --Ben Johncock |
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