This came out in 2004 – or at least that’s when I got it. Here’s what I said about it back then (with some minor editing):
Do you love Paul Weller so much you’d listen to him sing the phone book? Now’s your chance.
OK, not quite — but on Studio 150, the former Jam master and Style Councillor does croon a veritable catalogue of covers. And not The Beatles and Kinks oldies you might expect. Instead, Paul blows his smoky ’70s soul and singer-songwriter stylings over everything from Bob Dylan’s All Along The Watchtower and Neil Young’s Birds to Gordon Lightfoot’s Early Morning Rain and The Carpenters’ Close To You. It’s not as compelling as an album of originals would be, admittedly, but you can’t accuse him of phoning it in.
