The Jam - Sound Affects
Jimsent9 hours ago
#474
by Jim Erbe
The Jam
Sound Affects
Genre: Mod
Allen’s Rating: 4.5 out of 5
Jim’s Rating: 4.5 out of 5
Highlights:
Pretty Green
Set the House Ablaze
Start!
That’s Entertainment
The Man in the Corner Shop
Boy About Town
“You aren’t going to like The Jam,” a new friend of mine told me that on the second day of college. We had known each other for less than a week, but had already become fast friends. We talked constantly. Sought each other out at mealtimes. We were tight.
Now I know what you’re thinking, in that time, there is no way anyone could fully plumb the murky depths of my musical tastes, but still I took that advice to heart because:
A) She was really cute.
B) She seemed to really enjoy my company.
C) I was eighteen so A and B were pretty much the only things that mattered.
As a result, I have always maintained a fairly arm’s length relationship with The Jam. I’ve loved almost all of their singles but, in the back of my head, I knew The Jam were not for me. Forty years on and knowing half these songs by heart, I finally listened to Sound Affects for the first time. I should not have waited so long.
The song writing here is top shelf. All songs are written by Paul Weller (except “Music for the Last Couple” which is credited to the entire band) and they are very strong. They run the gamut from the flashy BritPop of “Boy About Town” to the jangly funk of “Start!” to the old school punk rock of “Set the House Ablaze.” The songs are stylistically all over the map, but virtually all are exceptional.
This album does suffer from some eighties production problems. The entire record sounds like the band was sealed in the metal vault, submerged and then recorded by a microphone sitting on the shore. It’s frustrating but not uncommon. On top of that, Side Two begins to feature some strange interstitial soundscapes between songs for <checks notes> no discernable reason.
Because the vocal were so buried, I had to look up the lyrics--and an on-line guide to British slang (to figure out what the bloody hell a Fruit Machine is)—and I’m glad I did. The lyrics are very good. Exceptional, really. Divorced from the music, they almost read like poetry.
A little bit of research later, that makes a great deal of sense. Weller apparently got very into the poetry of William Blake after the Setting Sons album and that drove his writing for the entire project. Weirdly, in another year Billy Bragg, also inspired by William Blake, would begin busking and calling himself William Bloke. So I guess the early eighties were a good time to be William Blake…except, you know, the whole dying 150 years earlier thing.
Reading these lyrics separately, they are clever and welcoming. They have a deftness and nuance that is almost entirely lost under the muddy production. These are the songs of an angry, young Thatcher supporter who matured enough to realize that problems are more complex than he thought and change his worldview 180 degrees. These are the songs of a young man who sees despair and joy in the world around him equal measure. And these are the songs of a songwriter whose talent is pushing his bandmates just slightly beyond their ability.
Paul Weller has called Sound Affects the best album The Jam ever produced, and I feel like the wording of that statement is very specific. I think that maybe he realized he had pushed The Jam as far as the idiom of Mod music go. He would try to push them further, with The Gift in 1982, which in retrospect sounds like a prototype for The Style Council. And while those sessions produced “A Town Called Malice” and “Beat Surrender”—two of my favorite singles—the process really frustrated Bruce Foxton and Rick Buckler, they couldn’t wait to return to form.
After I listened to Sound Affects the first time, I decided I needed to hear it in context. I downloaded the entire Jam catalog and listened to it in order. Doing that you can hear Paul Weller growing up album to album. You can hear the songwriting becoming more complex. And you can hear that this album is The Jam reaching its absolute peak. You can hear that something drastic will be required for Weller to progress any further.
It makes Weller’s move to The Style Council and then ultimately to a solo artist completely understandable, maybe even unavoidable.
Also, there are way worse ways to spend an afternoon.
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