Wild Wood (Deluxe Edition)

Paul Weller deservedly regained his status as the Modfather with his second solo album, Wild Wood. Actually, the album is only tangentially related to mod, since Weller picks up on the classicism of his debut, adding heavy elements of pastoral British folk and Traffic-styled trippiness. Add to that a yearning introspection and a clean production that nevertheless feels a little rustic, even homemade, and the result is his first true masterwork since ending the Jam. The great irony of the record is that many of the songs — "Has My Fire Really Gone Out?," "Can You Heal Us (Holy Man)" — question his motivation and, as is apparent in his spirited performances, he reawakened his music by writing these searching songs. Though this isn't as adventurous as the Style Council, it succeeds on its own terms, and winds up being a great testament from an artist entering middle age. And, it helped kick off the trad rock that dominated British music during the '90s. [The Deluxe Edition of Wild Wood isn't quite as momentous at it initially appears. Not that this set is poorly produced — far from it, really, as it is actually quite lovingly assembled, with good liner notes and a generous collection of extras, including most B-sides, several contemporary remixes, demos of almost all the songs on Wild Wood, a couple demos of songs that didn't make it to the final album, a selection of covers, and a few BBC recordings. All of this is great music, but the lack of momentum is that out of all these 29 bonus tracks, only three are previously unreleased. Most of these tracks have shown up on various import-only collections or previous reissues of Wild Wood, so there are bound to be plenty of Weller fanatics who have all this in their library already. But for those who don't have all these demos, covers, remixes, B-sides and live cuts, this is an excellent way to round up all the fine non-LP material Weller released during this era, which is one of the best in his solo career.]