Paul Weller couldn't have chosen a more appropriate song than "The Changingman" with which to open his Sunday night concert at Boston's Avalon. During the three decades of music-making that began when he fronted seminal mod revivalists the Jam, Weller has shifted his sonic focus from early-Who-inspired power-pop to blue-eyed soul to a richly textured amalgam of both.

\\Although Weller stuck strictly to solo material during his 90-minute set, the voracious energy and moody restlessness that characterized his work with the Jam was on audacious, riveting display. Indeed, Weller proved a far sturdier musical traveler than his tour bus, which apparently broke down somewhere in the bowels of New Jersey on Friday, forcing him to postpone that night's scheduled Boston show until Sunday. When he finally arrived, backed by a small, superb three-piece combo, a packed house was ready and waiting for the man the British press has dubbed "the Modfather."

\\Playing an array of electric and acoustic guitars and keyboards, Weller offered a kaleidoscopic portrait of the artist as a not-so-young man whose new album's title, "Heavy Soul," reflects his emotional disposition. Lyrically, Weller remains a seeker, at odds with the world even as he struggles to find his place in it. When Weller waded into his new record's title track, for example, shouting out the lyrics "I can't be beaten/ I can't be bought" as he flailed his guitar, he did so with a nearly religious fervor that made the tune sound like a defiant statement of purpose.

\\Bathed in yellow light, the band reached a sonic epiphany midway through its set with a tough, muscular reading of "Sunflower" that rippled into "Mermaids," a jubilant new song about salvation and self-discovery. Acoustic numbers like the new "Up In Suze's Room" also dazzled with gentle intensity.

\\Ultimately, though, what made Weller's material so captivating wasn't specifically his lyrics or music, but the searching, soulful quality of his voice, which transformed even the most ordinary