Paul Weller's '22 Dreams' - His First New Album In Three Years - Set For June 24, 2008

Chapel Hill, NC (Top40 Charts/ Yep Roc Records) - After a three year recording hiatus - during which he played historic concert series in NYC and LA devoting one evening each to his Jam, Style Council, and solo catalogs, and earned Lifetime Achievement honors at the 2007 Brit Awards, among other highlights - Paul Weller returns on June 24 with '22 Dreams,' (Yep Roc), his ninth solo album and the most ambitious of his career.

'22 Dreams' is not a return to form. It is not "Weller's best record since [fill in your favorite album here.]" It is a complete flowering of every musical impulse this artistic polymath has previously hinted at, and then some: rock, funk, soul, freak folk, free jazz, krautrock, classical, spoken word, electronica, and beyond.

"I've never understood the need to put music into boxes" says Weller. "I could listen to Debussy one minute, then some avant-garde jazz album, then Curtis Mayfield the next. To me, it all comes from the same source."

'22 Dreams' was co-produced by Weller and Simon Dine (Adventures in Stereo, Noonday Underground) and recorded at Weller's own Black Barn Studios in Surrey. Weller co-wrote the album's first single, "Echoes Round The Sun," with Oasis' Noel Gallagher. A shimmering blast of pure energy, the song is destined to join The Verve's "Bittersweet Symphony" and The Chemical Brothers' "Setting Sun" as an instant anthem of British rock. Other guests on the album include Blur guitarist Graham Coxon on the hazy soft shoe of "Black River," and modern day mod Little Barrie, who contributes frantic guitar work to the album's title track.

'22 Dreams' concludes with a four-song suite, which flows seamlessly from stark spoken word of "God" - co-written with ex-Stone Rose Aziz Ibrahim - to the mellotron and moog experiment "111" ("I've never done anything as full tilt as this," says Weller), to the wistful acoustic stomp of "Sea Spray," before concluding with the six minute instrumental "Night Lights," another experimental track which deploys everything from tabla and tape loops to the sounds of an electrical storm which rained down, serendipitously, during the final sessions for the album.