Paul Weller never stops dropping landmark recordings, nor striking out for new turf. 

“What would I do if I stopped?” he asks rhetorically with a shrug, as if it’s the silliest thing he’s ever heard. “And
why would I stop if making music is what I always wanted to do?” 

Instead he furthers his reputation as one of Britain’s very greatest living musicians by doing what he’s always done: heading back into the studio and making a new album. 

For latest album ‘Saturn’s Pattern’, follow-up to 2012’s ‘Sonik Kicks’, Weller had a very different album in mind. He wanted something with a bit of swing and space; 

“It’s not necessarily a dance album, but I wanted something with rhythmic drive. The soul side was a conscious
decision. It has a lot of movement in the record, there’s something physical,” he says. “But it has the tunes to
match. Not that I ever plan it but I always react a bit to what I’ve done last. I don’t want to repeat myself.
It’s pointless.” 

As is typical with a Paul Weller album, you’d struggle to define it stylistically. There a soulful feel that encompasses it all, especially on songs like the bustling, piano-fed 'Going My Way', or the wonderful Southern-fried organ precision of 'Pick It Up'. But no soul album could contain the skyscraping blues explosion of ‘White Sky’ or the slide-guitar frenzy of ‘In The Car…’, which Weller describes as his “M25 Blues”. There’s a psychedelic, jazzy, ‘Age Of Aquarius’ feel to songs like ‘Phoenix’, too, as well as the magnificently expansive summer breeze that is the closing ‘These City Streets’. It’s a soulful kaleidoscope of an album that feels both out-of-step and ahead of its time.