Paul Weller – Find El Dorado

Paul Weller’s new album Find El Dorado is not just another covers record. It’s a reflective, quietly radical project that reinterprets tracks discovered through late-night listening, friends’ recommendations, and crate-digging in second-hand record shops – now given a home in his own voice.

“These are songs I’ve carried with me for years. They’ve taken on new shapes over time. And now felt like the moment to share them.”

But Find El Dorado runs deeper than musical admiration. At the end of 2020, in our final Desperately Seeking Paul conversation, Paul told me this project was a way to keep creating without the weight of touring or writing a new album from scratch. “It’s a way of making a record, for me to still make music and without any pressure really – and not to go out and tour it. I just need a year off touring.”

Indeed, it is an album born of deliberate pause. Paul described how writing original material consumes him “24/7” and he needed space to remain creative without immersing himself in the intensity of songwriting. “There’s a lot of tunes I want to cover anyway, so it’s a good way of me doing that, still being creative and making the records, but I ain’t got to think about writing.”

While 2004’s Studio 150 was Weller’s first covers collection, Find El Dorado is an entirely different proposition. ‘They don’t sound similar in any way whatsoever, some will be known to some people, but a lot of them are quite obscure. A few folky, sort of old obscure folk songs’.

Steve Cradock, who produced the album from his Devon studio, revealed to me that Paul had the tracklist mapped out early on. “He had the songs… they’re tracks that people and friends have played him over the years, just to turn him onto music that he kept earmarked. He told me he wanted to do an acoustic-based covers album – just because he thinks it would be nice to have in his canon of albums”.

Many of Steve’s home recordings – acoustic and piano-led arrangements – formed the base tracks. The result is deliberately unfussy: intimate but not lo-fi, arranged but not overly polished. “I tried to make it not a demo thing, but just not a posh-sounding record. That was what I thought in my head it would be good to sound like”.

This creative pause also aligns with Weller’s desire to spend more time with family and reflect. “It’s really hard to balance the two things, man,” he told me. “I kind of do all right I think. But it’d be nice to have a period of time when I don’t have that [creative pressure]”.

The album opens with Richie Havens’ ‘Handouts In The Rain’, reimagined as a beautiful duet with Declan O’Rourke, immediately drawing listeners into a haunting juxtaposition: exquisite melodies carrying devastating truths. The lyrics confront violence, hatred, and betrayal – bombing foreign brothers, trampling sisters, teaching children lies – themes that resonate painfully amid the horrors unfolding in Gaza today. Yet this darkness is set against a tender, soulful backdrop, culminating in the unforgettable image of “taking handouts in the rain.” Opening with this track establishes the album’s moral courage, refusing to turn away from injustice or the shared human cost of conflict, reminding us that beneath the surface beauty lies a reckoning with shame, suffering, and the consequences of hatred.

Following this powerful opening is Bobby Charles’ ‘Small Town Talk’. I was lucky enough to be in the studio when Steve Cradock put down bass on the song – it’s almost turned into a dub version, with such a cool groove and one of many highlights for me.

Brian Protheroe’s ‘Pinball’, is reimagined with Jacko Peake’s haunting saxophone, unfolding like another intimate fragment of Paul Weller’s inner map – subtle, reflective, and richly textured. ‘El Dorado’ by Eamon Friel, featuring Noel Gallagher’s shimmering guitar, adds a layer of understated grandeur, while Seckou Keita’s kora on ‘Journey’ infuses the album with an ethereal lightness, weaving delicate threads of sound that balance the weightier themes with moments of transcendence.

The Bee Gees’ ‘I Started A Joke’ is reimagined with baroque, dreamy strings arranged by Hannah Peel. Ray Davies’ ‘Nobody’s Fool’, known to most as the theme from Budgie, is given dignified melancholy. The selections range from Merle Haggard’s ‘White Line Fever’ to The Guerrillas’ gospel-rock groove ‘Lawdy Rolla’ – obscure, diverse, unafraid.

Adding to this reflective tapestry is ‘When You Are A King’, originally by White Plains in 1971 – a sweet-sounding yet biting commentary on inherited privilege and unearned power, describing a scruffy boy destined to become king while never having to lift a finger. Its inclusion feels timely in the wake of King Charles’s coronation, reminding us that people are still handed thrones – literal or metaphorical – simply by birth.

Among these carefully chosen songs is ‘Daltry Street’, written by one Paul’s current bandmates Jake Fletcher (previously covered to great effect by P.P. Arnold). It is a stark reflection on lost hope and longing for connection, where memories of neighbours and lovers blur into a haunting refrain of always being ‘lost not found.’

‘One Last Cold Kiss’ adds further emotional gravity. Originally written by Felix Pappalardi and Gail Collins for Mountain, it was later recorded with searing intimacy by Christy Moore, whose version framed it as a lament steeped in Irish folk sorrow. The song tells of two island swans mated for life until a hunter’s arrow pierces the female’s heart, leaving her mate desolate, refusing any other bride. Its haunting imagery of love, loyalty, and grief deepens the album’s themes of loss and moral reckoning, juxtaposing tender beauty with the horror of violence and the pain of absence.

His cover of ‘Never the Same’ by Lal Waterson brings eerie pastoral melancholy to Find El Dorado. Her stark, fragmented imagery of Johnny and Rosemary, drowning in rain while adults look away with indifference, finds new life in Paul’s voice. His interpretation deepens the album’s exploration of irreversible loss and moral failure, with the haunting refrain “we’ll never be the same again” echoing as both lament and warning – a reminder that beauty, innocence, and hope can be crushed by neglect in a world too willing to look away.

Robert Plant’s soulful voice and harmonica on ‘Clive’s Song’ add raw emotional depth to lyrics about outrunning the blues, masking pain with fleeting moments of feeling “so fine,” while knowing despair still waits beneath.

At its core, Find El Dorado is about listening. These are songs that have spoken to Weller at different times – some shaping his musical landscape over decades, others discovered only recently and resonating deeply. He’s made something meaningful without forcing it – an album that feels like an artist stopping to breathe, take stock, and share music that matters to him with the world.

Dancing Through the Fire

This album is just a glimpse into Paul Weller’s nearly five-decade journey – a journey I tell in full in my upcoming authorised oral history, Paul Weller: Dancing Through the Fire, published on 11th September. Featuring unheard stories and voices from his entire life – family, friends, bandmates, producers, collaborators and many more – it captures the full sweep of an artist who never stands still.

This new LP is just one small part of his story, but it reveals so much about what makes Paul Weller unique and his enduring creativity.

Click your preferred podcast platform to listen…

Journalist and author, Pete Paphides wrote the sleeve notes, and the July 2025 Uncut Cover story (Sept 2025 issue if you are hunting for it)…

Dean Chalkley took the photos for the inside of the album…

Geoff Pesche mastered the album at Abbey Road…

Brian Protheroe created the original of ‘Pinball’

Martin Carthy played on the original of ‘Never the Same’ …

Tony Harlow (Warner boss) talks about Paul’s return to the label…

Declan O’Rourke talks about their opening album duet…

Amelia Coburn on the story behind ‘One Last Cold Kiss’…