On a drizzly London afternoon, Paul Weller walks into a half-lit studio and unclasps a battered briefcase of memories. Out spill dog-eared singles, forgotten B-sides, and TV themes thick with smoke and regret. He calls the haul Find El Dorado, though the gold he’s chasing is emotional, not metallic. Across fourteen tracks he dusts off songs that once slipped through history’s fingers—Bobby Charles’ laconic Small Town Talk, Richie Havens’ indignant Handouts in the Rain, even the Bee Gees’ fragile I Started a Joke—and invites them to sit a spell in the present day.
The room is crowded but never chaotic. Robert Plant’s harmonica hovers like a ghost in the rafters during Clive’s Song. Noel Gallagher’s second acoustic guitar on El Dorado is felt more than heard, a conspiratorial whisper beside Seckou Keita’s luminous kora. Amelia Coburn lends her clear, Celtic-tinged voice to the tragic swan-elegy One Last Cold Kiss, while Jacko Peake’s saxophone winds through Pinball like cigarette haze over last orders. Steve Cradock, long-time foil and producer, keeps the tape rolling and the beer cold. Together they conjure the amber warmth of a seventies working-men’s club—sticky tables, cracked vinyl seats, and the faint hope that tonight’s singer might still save your life.
Weller never grandstands. He’s content to let the songs reveal themselves, stripping away excess until only their bruised hearts remain. Duncan Browne’s Journey skips along on finger-picked guitar and kora, an unlikely caravan of Kentish folk and West African sunshine. Brian Protheroe’s Pinball, once a chart novelty, becomes a wry lament for rented rooms and stale bread. The Guerrillas’ Lawdy Rolla swaggers in with gospel fervor, proof that obscurity and brilliance can share the same breath.
There are detours into country twang, music-hall whimsy, and hushed midnight confessionals, yet the album feels bound by a single, steady pulse: empathy. Whether mourning dead swans or laughing at the cosmic joke of one’s own existence, Weller stands beside each narrator, a fellow traveler rather than a curator. In doing so he proves that a cover need not be a museum piece; it can be a living, breathing second chance.
When the needle lifts and the room finally empties, the songs linger like half-remembered dreams. You may walk out with Richie Havens’ question still rattling—“Who’ll hand out love in the rain?”—or the Bee Gees’ fatal punch line echoing in your ears. Either way, you’ve been somewhere real. El Dorado was never a city of gold; it was this moment, shared between strangers and old friends, where the jukebox finally plays your life back to you—and it all makes sense.
