![]() ![]() It does wade into political waters, but it’s never apocalyptic, aggressively confrontational and angry as tunes on this record are. But soul music, as a universal language, is probably the least offensive and least criticized form of pop. Setting Sons would likely be up for the title if it weren’t for the casual inclusion of Vandella’s cover 'Heatwave' tacked on the end. As a matter of fact – and speaking strictly musically and not negatively – it’s arguably the least soulful Paul Weller record there is. Weller has described the album, which was released 40 years ago this month, as sounding like “a mixture between Revolver and Michael Jackson’s Off The Wall”, but as it so happens, little of this soul/funk influence seeps through clearly. The production of the album on a whole takes hints from these contemporaries (in great contrast to the dense and textured previous record Setting Sons) and Rick Buckler’s drumming in particular is very of-the-time. However, the same could probably be said of a number of new wave/post-punk groups that were around at the time and that Weller was very into, such as Joy Division and Gang Of Four. He works in his literary flair with a Shelley quote in the liner notes, the cover is a pop art collection of pictures that can each be related to an album track (not far from the artwork on 1995’s Stanley Road), and there is a smattering of 60s Beatles/Kinks/Small Faces influence about the whole thing.Īs for this silly business about electricity pylons: you actually can hear a stark, steely quality among the tracks that is very akin to that imagery – and is, as such, topically appropriate. You have trademark deft social commentary ('Man In The Corner Shop', 'That’s Entertainment'), battles with doubt (Monday'), laments of communication breakdown ('Start!') and spitting political rage ('Set The House Ablaze', 'Scrape Away'). This could be because it sounds “fresh” as he says, or it could be because it’s a self-contained piece of Weller himself – at least the bits he would respect and revisit. Sound Affects is Paul Weller’s favourite Jam album. Although all that sounds like a crock, Sound Affects is well and truly saturated with this murky mixture, as well as with the additional absorption of contemporary styles, 60s formulae and steadfast motifs that would mark the majority of Weller’s career. ![]() So, in short, the writer’s perceived influences on The Jam’s 1980 album included Arthur and Guinevere, the Mask of Anarchy, the Fabs, and wire transmission towers. During the same time, Weller apparently had a ‘thing’ for electricity pylons. He was reading histories of Camelot alongside the romanticism of Percy Bysshe Shelley and William Blake, obsessing over The Beatles’ Revolver, and delving further into his disillusionment with the political and social climate that had prevailed in England at the end of the 1970s. Paul Weller was barely 22 when he started recording Sound Affects, his fifth album in just over 3 years. ![]()
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