Pitchfork

As the elder statesperson for Britain's trad-rock community, Paul Weller doesn't have a whole lot left to prove. His place in the rock canon was already sealed by his music with the Jam, his work with the Style Council was laudably adventurous-- even if their last couple of records were total disasters-- and he recovered from the debacle of that band's demise nicely in the early 90s by getting back to basics, turning to his love of old r&b and Small Faces guitar pop for inspiration.

As Is Now is Weller's eighth studio solo album, and it does very little that you could call unexpected, but does it all very well nonetheless. Following the inconsequential covers album Studio 150, it's a welcome return to form, harking back to the straight-ahead rock'n'roll of 1997's Heavy Soul with shades of the mellow craft that dominated 2002's Illumination. Weller's husky voice still handles the charging rockers nicely, but it's the more subtle ballads like the searching, Mellotron-soaked "Pan" where he really shines and gets to use his range to its fullest effect.

"I Wanna Make It Alright" is one of several songs that hint at Weller's love of jazz, loping along with a swinging gait as pianos whiz about in the background and he sings in a falsetto. "Roll Along Summer" goes even further in that direction, centering on a fluttering alto sax solo and loose-limbed drumming that smoothly underpins Weller's swooping vocals. The alto sax makes a grittier appearance on the the seven-minute groover "Bring Back the Funk", a track that suffers from lyrics as ill-considered as the title. By the 20th time Weller sings "We gotta bring back the funk, ya'll/ We gotta bring back the love ya'll," you'll wish it was an instrumental. Still, it beats his perplexing order to "sing you little fuckers/ Sing like you got no choice" on the brittle trad-rock of "Come On/Let's Go".

So it's not perfect by any stretch of the imagination, but even when the lyrics are tolerable at best it's tough to argue with lean rockers like "Blink and You'll Miss it" and "From the Floorboards Up", both of which showcase monster choruses and plenty of winding, heavily distorted lead guitar. What really struck me as I listened to As Is Now, though, is how much it grew on me. Where on the first listen I found it merely okay, it's a record that reveals itself as a work of surprising depth and detail when you give it multiple spins and start noticing things like the clever trombone counterpoint in the verses of "Here's the Good News". For a guy with nothing left to prove, Weller sounds determined not to fade away, and as long as he keeps making records like this every couple of years, there's no danger of that happening.