Paul Weller review: Modfather exudes cool in sweltering Marquee
Paul Weller on stage at Live at the Marquee. Picture: Noel Sweeney
The country has just luxuriated in, or — depending on your disposition, endured — a week of weather that leaves everyone a little unhinged.
A week of relentless sunshine, of barbecues and beach days soundtracked perhaps by Stanley Road, or maybe a bit of The Jam, a smidge of The Style Council.
Into this sweltering Friday night in Cork walked Paul Weller: The epitome of cool.
He's 68 now — the Modfather, the Changingman — still operating with the focus of someone with something to prove.
Three careers, 30-odd albums, the man from whom Noel Gallagher borrowed his haircut, and rang to play on , has never stood still for long.
Inside the Marquee, the air is thick and the canvas sweating.
The crowd is a very specific creature: Men in their 50s and 60s — still buttoned, still sharp — women who came of age with The Jam and never quite left.
And scattered among them, a younger contingent lurks, the kids who were dragged along once and have since fully converted, or the ones who found him through Oasis mythology and stayed for the real thing.
It's mostly a vintage audience for a man who has refused to become a museum piece.
Weller is introduced by local comedian and activist Tadgh Hickey, who tells us that if everyone were as decent a human being as Weller, the world wouldn't be in the state it is in.
The screens read, "Playing Israel is supporting genocide", as the crowd roars their approval.
For an artist not renowned for small talk, he's very engaged with the crowd. "How are you doing, Cork?", he swaggers, chewing gum.
"I love your city, I gotta tell you that. You have a beautiful city. We got a long set tonight, we're going to bring you right through the years. Through the decades, even."
And he is a man of his word.
For Weller, the music has always been the real conversation.
"A gig... It's the same sense of communion as a sacred rite," he once said.
On a sweltering night under canvas in Cork, nobody's arguing.
The set opens with , sliding into , still taut and propulsive more than four decades on.
Then Curtis Mayfield's Move On Up, dropped early, a statement of intent.
This isn't a heritage act replaying old glories; it's an artist mapping the lineage of his own cool.
The Woking fury still flickers beneath it all — he mentions Oliver Cromwell, and covid (a load of bollox), the working-class anger that powered The Jam, that saw things clearly and wrote them down in lines that haven't dulled with time.
Weller has always been in motion: From the sharp urgency of The Jam to the continental gloss of The Style Council, through the beret years, the jazz detours that cost him half his audience, the refusal to play it safe.
And then , the homecoming album that brought them all back.
The crowd are treated to hit after hit, played with precision and intent, with a full band including a lively brass section.
The crowd knows every word and doesn't need to be told to move. Communion, as he put it, and yes, it is good for the soul.
It feels like a fitting culmination of Cork's Long Hot Summer.
The crowd bathing in the music, the magic, the memories.
When kicks off, the tent does too, the heat still clinging to the canvas, bodies pressed together, hands in the air.
Other highlights of the lengthy set include and Jam classic
As the 10.30pm curfew at the Marquee approaches, it feels as if he has already played a flock of favourites that few other artists could match. For the encore, however, he manages to hit an even higher level with a furious version of and a achingly-beautiful rendition of
A cool man, a hot night, and not a word wasted.
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