PAUL WELLER is often accorded an elder statesman status which ill becomes him - in this listener's opinion, the Modfather never really earned his stripes. Sure, The Jam were a damn fine singles band, but the Style Council were, at best, inconsistent, and since the early '90s, he's produced much solid solo material, but scarcely an original idea.

Fact is, Weller has more in common with the retro-stylist brigade (Lenny Kravitz, The Black Crowes) than ornery old buzzards like Neil Young. He's a graftsman intent on replicating the sounds he was raised on - Steve Marriot, The (Small) Faces, Traffic - but never transmutes the base metal of those influences into hard gold. The role of curator might seem like an honourable one, but if you put rock 'n' roll in a glass case and throw peas at it, it gets old real fast.

Modern Classics is a collection of selected highlights from Weller's remarkably successful last half-decade, and one of the first things one notices about these songs is how much they owe to the aforementioned Brit rock/r...b/soul acts. Fair enough; even the most gifted artists start out copying the masters, but they must eventually paint their own masterpieces or become nostalgia-merchants. On evidence of this compilation, St. Paul's not so much a renaissance man as a monastery-bound calligrapher dedicated to reproducing ancient texts without adding anything new to them.

Weller's legendary aloofness can seem inappropriate - superiority complexes do not befit artists who appear content to repeat rather than stretch themselves. And sure, the bulk of Weller's tunes seem authentic - tried and tested chord sequences, vintage textures, wrought-iron performances from Steve White, Mark Nelson and the man himself - but they lack that crucial twist of mystery in the melodies. 'The Weaver', 'Friday Street' and 'Peacock Suit' all have their DNA in place, but want for the indefinable wildness of spirit that characterises great music.

Of course, there are indispensables: 'You Do Something To Me' is as beautiful a ballad as the man has ever penned, while 'Sunflower' and 'The Changingman' possess spark as well as starch. Also, virtuoso workouts like 'Uh-Huh Oh-Yeh' are distinguished by some quite brilliant production strokes, and plenty of imagination in the overdub department. But the limited edition second album, Live Classics, only serves to remind that, after 20 minutes at a Weller gig, one tends to abstractedly long for somebody to do something wrong. On that level, songs like 'Broken Stones', 'Out Of The Sinking' and 'Heavy Soul' evoke all the glamour and danger of an efficient roadcrew laying tarmacadam on an overcast Wednesday. Modern Classics is the sound of a man working on the chain gang, chipping at a bloody big rock.