If Paul Weller played the arena game, he’d have massive luminous Mod targets and nostalgic pictures of his Style Council era behind him and share dewy-eyed reminiscences of his Jam days with Bruce Foxton and Rick Buckler. However, the man who split that band at the height of their popularity has always done things his way.
His only concessions to playing an arena are two video screens broadcasting the performance from either side of the stage – and they’re in black and white. Otherwise, there are no more visual bells and whistles than there were in 1977, when the Jam played the Red Cow in Hammersmith, west London. It’s hard not to admire his chutzpah, although the Modfather’s disregard for the conventions of arena rock causes some teething troubles. For the first half an hour, he seems slightly overawed by the cavernous black hole, with its initially boomy sound. One hyperactive punter seems to undergo some sort of mystical religious experience during the Krautrock-throbbing Long Time, but otherwise, selections from Weller’s recent run of critically heralded albums aren’t playing too well with an expectant arena audience here for greatest hits.
“Farkin’ ’ell,” he grunts at the muted response to The Cranes Are Back, from last year’s A Kind Revolution. “Only two people in Leeds bought it, eh? I’m surprised you don’t know it, because it’s a farkin’ great song.” It is a great song – a heartfelt, hopeful ballad about the migrant crisis – but there are sighs of relief when Weller introduces “Something from the 80s, a shit decade but there were some great things, like this.” Indeed, and Shout to the Top is the pick of a soulful trilogy from his second great band, the Style Council, when Weller’s musical moods changed as often as his barnets.
Although he’s probably not had to work as hard to win over an audience for a while, he gradually does it on his own terms, as ever. The 31-song setlist visits every corner of his career, and is as fine a selection as he’s assembled. His short-lived, early 90s band the Paul Weller Movement spawned more bad bowel jokes than hits, but the percussively revamped Into Tomorrow is the night’s most unexpected triumph.
His 90s solo smashes (Peacock Suit, turbulent smoochie You Do Something to Me) pile up, but ageing audience eyes visibly moisten when a sublime, “la la la”-laden Man in the Corner Shop is the first of six Jam songs. That’s Entertainment is as bittersweet as ever. The Eton Rifles is tenderly dedicated to “that prick, Jacob Rees-Mogg”.
There’s nothing from True Meanings, his as-yet-unreleased 13th solo album, but perhaps a lengthy stripped-down section, in which half the band take up acoustic guitars, gives clues as to what will apparently be an orchestral folk direction. The effect is, perhaps, more suited to a campfire singalong, but it works here by focusing attention on the beauty of the songs and singing. Wildwood, English Rose, last year’s Hopper and the rest are really lovely. Closing Jam colossus A Town Called Malice finally wins him a rapturous reception and the suspicion remains that arena “sheds” don’t really suit him, but as Weller has always fought against becoming a comfortable superstar, perhaps another challenge isn’t a bad thing.
• At Motorpoint Arena, Nottingham, 27 February. Box office: 0843 373 3000. Then touring until 3 March.
