More Modern Classics (Deluxe Edition)

Obviously, More Modern Classics is meant to pick up where its 1998 predecessor, Modern Classics: The Greatest Hits, left off. Fifteen years of singles, many U.K. hits, are collected in one place for the Paul Weller fan who waits for such pleasurable collections to make the listening easy. Material here is culled from the seven albums that Weller has released since 2000, plus recent non-album singles such as “Starlite” and “Flame-Out!” and the previously unreleased “Brand New Toy.” Weller clearly worked with many different styles, thrashing through with a sense of his Jam days on “From the Floorboards Up” and “Come On/Let’s Go,” while “Wishing on a Star” from his 2004 covers album, Studio 150, casts him as the sophisticated studio soul singer he’s always wanted to be. The varied nature of Weller's recording career has made him a hard artist to pin down, especially in the U.S., where mainstream tastes often vary from the U.K. The deluxe edition includes an additional 20 songs from this same era, making for an even more in-depth study of 1998 to 2014.