With latest album 22 Dreams doing brisk business among those who always preferred the more soulful side of Paul Weller, the DVD release of Far East & Far Out seems prudently timed. Filmed on The Style Councilโ€™s debut excursion to Japan in 1984, this 55-minute recording of the bandโ€™s live set provides a fascinating reminder of Wellerโ€™s chameleon-like passage through pop.

Emerging from the wings sans guitar and fronting a nine-piece soul band, Weller is unrecognisable from the brooding figure who felt heโ€™d come up against a musical brick wall in the shape of final Jam album The Gift.

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Instead, in a career swerve unseen since David Bowieโ€™s transition from diamond dog to blue-eyed crooner a decade before, he leads the band through vaporous Philly soul (โ€œLong Hot Summerโ€), jazzy instrumentals (โ€œLe Departโ€) and militant P-Funk (โ€œMoney Go Roundโ€). Occasionally, he even smiles. The sense of a great weight having been lifted from his pastel-shirted shoulders is palpable. โ€œHereโ€™s One That Got Awayโ€ and โ€œMy Ever Changing Moodsโ€ are breezy exercises in bespoke pop, all neat edges and fine tailoring, while a spirited โ€œDropping Bombs On The White Houseโ€ should make all you old-school Red Wedge activists go a little misty-eyed.

This new found sense of freedom and enthusiasm spills over into the band. Itโ€™s hard to imagine Rick Buckler tying a white kamikaze scarf around his head, playing a drum solo and then taking a bow centre-stage, but thatโ€™s exactly what a beaming Steve White does.

Not that these new musical horizons mean the past has been entirely forgotten. Delivered almost a cappella, โ€œIt Just Came To Pieces In My Handsโ€ is a scathing dismissal of his tenure as โ€œvoice of a generationโ€, โ€œI thought I was lord of this crappy jungle/I should have been put behind barsโ€ he seethes, before adjusting his pullover and embarking on Booker T-inspired feet warmer โ€œMickโ€™s Upโ€. As the sleevenotes to โ€œWalls Come Tumbling Downโ€ put it: โ€œHeโ€™s back! Yes, and a changed person.โ€

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EXTRAS: None.

PAUL MOODY