Sound Affects

tracks on LP: Pretty Green / Monday / But I’m Different Now / Set The House Ablaze / Start! / That’s Entertainment / Dream Time / Man In The Corner Shop / Music For The Last Couple / Boy About Town / Scrape Away

Record Label: Polydor POLD 5035
Producer: Vic Coppersmith-Heaven & The Jam

Released: 20/11/80
Purchased: 1980

The Jam | Sound Affects | Polydor | 1980 | NOT ANOTHER Jam album? Well, no, actually. There’s never been “just another Jam Album”, and ‘Sound Affects’ is no exception. Like each successive release of their career, this album takes the band forward, just as ‘Setting Sons’ did from ‘Mod Cons’ did from ‘Modern World’ did from ‘In The City’.

‘Sound Affects’ isn’t a perfect Jam album, even if it is a great one, but above all it’s a brave departure and an earnest effort to break new ground. ‘Sound Affects’ is The Jam today, and that’s what we need most of all.

The new songs represent a band that’s as vital and as capable of anger as ever; but more than ever before The Jam’s attacking spirit is being allied to melodic invention, and to lyrics that are increasingly thoughtful. Ignore any suggestions that they’re going soft or ’67. That dense, heavy Jam sound which found its climax in ‘Going Underground’ and in the last album has been cut back, stripped down to only its most basic parts.

Instrumentation is stark, spare and hard — though any bleakness that might imply is amply compensated for by the richness of the playing and by the depth of the writing. The new songs include some of the simplest the band have ever done, yet also the most memorable.

Side one opens with ‘Pretty Green’, already an established feature in the live set. Built on a terse, insistent rhythm (inspired initially by Weller’s liking for Michael Jackson), its lyrics describe an innocence that comes quickly to grasp the cash nexus: luxury or necessity:

“this is society / You can’t do nothing, unless it’s in the pocket”.

By way of complete contrast comes ‘Monday’, a beautiful love song that climbs up to classic status via some soaring chorus harmonies, culminating in Weller’s impassioned declaration: “I will never be embarrassed about love again”, perhaps the record’s most significant line.

Paul Weller’s frank admiration for middle-period Beatles is evident throughout ‘Sound Affects’, especially in the guitar work. ‘Start’ we already know about (included here in re-mixed form) and another driving love song ‘But I’m Different Now’ comes stuffed with ‘Dr Robert’ riffing and ‘I Feel Fine’ ripples. The crucial point, though, is that these influences are incorporated only to enrich what’s already there, and remain firmly subservient to Weller’s own song-writing gifts and to the distinct, powerful identity of The Jam.

As with The Who touches in earlier work, whoever they look to for inspiration it’s always The Jam themselves who come out on top.

‘Set The House Ablaze’ has an ‘Eton Rifles’ feel, strident Buckler beat and marching army whistling. Its words, too, echo themes from ‘Setting Sons’ — old mate joins army, indoctrination sets in, communications breakdown follows. The tone is bitter, but with frustration not hatred.

‘That’s Entertainment’, which closes the first side, must rate as one of Paul Weller’s finest pieces to date. Mellow, soothing harmonies underscore the chorus / title-line, brutally thrown into an ironic light by the verses, which amount to a jarring litany of snapshot images seen through a young man’s eyes in contemporary England, some violent, some sordid, some tender:

“A police car and a screaming siren . . .
Paint splattered walls and the cry of a tomcat . . .
That’s entertainment.”

No point me labouring songs that speak well for themselves, but it’s been a perennial aspect of Paul’s lyrics, this trick of taking the individual-in-a-crowd and throwing his perspective into sudden isolation, the participant as spectator (‘In The Crowd’, ‘Away From The Numbers’, ‘Tube Station’, ‘Wardour Street’) retreating into himself. Sufficient to say that he’s observing with more vivid descriptive ability than at any time previously.

Side two starts with a couple of similarly excellent numbers, but overall it fails to maintain the standard of the first. ‘Dream Time’ is harsh and abrasive, more traditional Jam in style. ‘Man In The Corner Shop’, another gorgeously memorable tune, returns to some gently sardonic reflections on the English class system: as always, the view-point is a humane, personalistic one rather than political in the mass, didactic sense.

Although there are no Bruce Foxton compositions this time around, ‘Music For The Last Couple’ is credited as a group effort. Essentially a studio session, it makes great play of the ‘sound effects’ parodied in the LP’s title and cover art. Very loose in construction, with few words to speak of, it’s the album’s one lapse into self-indulgence; it’s a pressure drop and, really, it lets the side down.

But the final tracks — ‘Boy About Town’ and ‘Scrape Away’ — also represent a tailing off. The former is strangely out of place, almost like one of those jaunty mod anthems that Jam imitators were churning out all last year. The lyrics do work to undercut the self-confidence of the chorus somewhat — but even the addition of ‘Penny Lane’ brass doesn’t lift the song much above average. ‘Scrape Away’, meanwhile, is disappointingly negative and vague. Like ‘Last Couple’, it gives an uncomfortable impression of being rushed through to beat a deadline.

But let’s end on a positive note. Where ‘Sound Affects’ is good it’s great, and where it’s not so good it’s stilt good. The Jam should go on being number one in our hearts and charts because they go on earning the right to be. I’ve got ‘Sound Affects’ and I’m chuffed with it and all I want now . . . is another Jam album. (NME, 22/11/80)

And so it came to pass that the fifth long playing epistle according to Paul Weller, Bruce Foxton and Rick Buckler, The Jam, was sent forth unto the multitude . . .

It’s hard not to feel admiration, respect and, ultimately, the good-humoured jealousy intrinsic in any conversation regarding the ability, talent and maturity of Paul Weller. His 22 years of life in the modern world has expressed itself articulately and powerfully as any wizened old sage.

His acute ear for melody, his instinctive feel for the right emotional tinting, his powerful and relentless mental and physical attack are the seeds that are brought to fruition by the drive of his rhythm section cohorts. These are the elements that have made The Jam one of the few indispensable listening experiences to have emerged in the last five years.

‘Sound Affects’ finds Paul Weller’s vision seeking retrenchment after the psychological full stop that was ‘Setting Sons’ and “Going Underground”, but the move has paradoxically sent The Jam spinning off into a new area.

The sound still has the intrinsic Jam hallmarks of the pumping economical percussion of Rick Buckler, the driving but melodic bass of Bruce Foxton which charges the rhythm and allows Weller to aurally slash and cut his targets and expose the complacency with which we accept the realities we allow to be constructed for us.

“Pretty Green” starts the set with a throbbing bounce of bass while Paul Weller sings a nursery rhyme round with an edgy kick that plots the insignificance of the importance we place on money.

“Monday” is a wistful ballad of yearning and contentment that weeps on the chorus but contains an inner strength that makes it endearing.

The volley of chords that heralds “But I’m Different Now” points to vintage Jam attack but the song holds an economy the echoes the early sixties British beat groups associated with The Jam.

“Set The House Ablaze” is more traditional Jam with a staccato riff that punches in a manner laid down by “The Eton Rifles” but the anger is now directed at the blindness of the hatred inspired by fascism with washes of threatening energy.

A remixed version of “Start” is next up with some snappy Stax horn moves adding a touch of refreshment to a now familiar song.

“That’s Entertainment” is the set’s high point that angrily observes the mundane realities of eighties England and twists the knife with the poignant juxtaposition of the angelic chorus which says more about life today than a clutch of concerned ‘World In Action’s’ and ‘Play For Today’s’. A magnificent piece of work.

Side two is opened by the crash of power and drive of “Dream Time” which bursts through a backward tape loop and appears to be one of the more slacker Weller compositions on the set but the tension perks by its conclusion.

“Man In The Corner Shop” is a tongue-in-cheek social observation that examines the petty jealousies that prevent individuals enjoying their lot and the social camouflage that hides it all.

“Music For The Last Couple” is essentially a filler that experiments with the studio in a manner not dissimilar to XTC’s forays on vinyl but it has the appearance of a melting pot of ideas that weren’t brought to any conclusion.

“Boy About Town” makes up for the previous aberration by being as close to Jam perfection possible, delicately flavoured with trumpet garnishing that takes on the anthems by last years Glory Boys et al and other clannish social inadequates and wins hands down in articulating the trapped nature of ‘freedom’.

“Scrape Away” is a vicious bout of accusation against cynicism and the loss of zeal. A thoughtful and angry end to another fine Jam set that still eschews complacency but adds a new positive softness to the established abrasion, attack, rawness and life of previous outings.

. . . And the multitudes were satisfied . . . (Record Mirror, 22/11/80)