Paul Weller has now looked exactly the same for almost as long as Bryan Ferry has — he still has that rail-thin, Mod-haired appearance that Oasis’s Gallagher brothers stole from him. And if you’re willing to write off the Style Council as an eight-year indulgence, his music’s been almost as consistent. The " angry young man " tag didn’t fit Weller for long — he came out of the closet as a romantic about halfway through the Jam’s tenure. By that band’s swan song, 1982’s The Gift, he was already turning into a soul singer, with the necessary mix of warmth and cool. And that mix has served him well since he went solo in the early ’90s.

Maybe the US audience still hasn’t forgiven him for breaking up the Jam, since most of his solo albums — which offer some of the most accessible songwriting of his career — have barely sold enough to qualify him for cult status. Last fall’s Heliocentric wasn’t even released in America, and a band tour at that time was scrapped because of an apparent lack of advance sales. He finally played to about two-thirds of a house at Berklee last Thursday, as part of an " intimate acoustic " tour (i.e., he couldn’t afford to take the band). As he wryly remarked, " You might not know these songs, since they’re not on the radio every five minutes. "

The songs in question came largely from his five solo albums rather than from his old bands, but Weller did play one Style Council number ( " Headstart for Happiness " ) and three by the Jam ( " English Rose, " " That’s Entertainment, " and " Town Called Malice " — the last the only one that wasn’t originally an acoustic tune). " That’s Entertainment " showed how good a singer he’s become: he delivered it with a sense of nuance he didn’t used to have. Thus the lyric, which originally sounded like a list of well-placed cheap shots, painted a much more poignant picture of urban desolation.

But the night mainly wound up proving that Weller’s latest songs often sound better without the long jams of the recorded electric versions. Stripped down to acoustic basics, " You Do Something to Me " and " Foot of the Mountain " revealed his oft-overlooked gift for melody, and the new " There’s No Drinking After You’re Dead " was a nice mix of haunting tune and seize-the-day lyric. Weller wasn’t any chattier on stage than he’s been in the past, but did smile and acknowledge the crowd more often. And though he was seated throughout the set, he did enough foot stomping and loud strumming to head off charges of mellowing out. Yes, his new songs have more emotional generosity than his old ones, but that’s not mellowing out, it’s growing up. And if you consider what his old role model Pete Townshend was doing at about the same age (The Iron Man and a bogus Who tour), then Weller comes out smelling like an English rose.