The best of the style council album4/30/2023 ![]() ![]() The only difference was their were new bands whose music was being played at these dances, including the later music of The Jam and the new Paul Weller group The Style Council. One day, during the summer of 1983 while working and living in Southern Wisconsin at a resort, I bought a music magazine in nearby Lake Geneva, Wisconsin, in which was an article about a new mod scene that was popping up as a second generation took to the music and clothing style beloved by the original mods in the Sixties. Well, remember, I was a fan of The Jam and specifically their lead singer and creative visionary Paul Weller. How in the heck can a man who grew up in Central Indiana, spent four short years in Southwestern Ohio, then moved back to his hometown, the one in which our said hero claimed to which he would never return, to raise his family, ever hear of the UK-centric and generally altogether European artist The Style Council? Many of you will be scratching your heads at that statement. This collection shows that while the Style Council made plenty of missteps, they also recorded a number of Paul Weller's very best songs.I am just going to say it: The Style Council is rock’s most underrated band of all-time. What's most surprising is how many of these tracks don't seem rooted in the stereotypes of 1980s pop at all, but have a timeless quality. And while this collection unfortunately doesn't include any of the surprisingly large number of guitar-driven folk-pop songs Weller penned while with the Style Council, it also spares listeners from hearing any of the band's egregiously horrid rap numbers. The collection also illustrates how successful Weller was at pioneering the (admittedly odd) genre of "political protest/lounge revival" with such vitriolic but easy-on-the-ears tracks as "All Gone Away" and "Come to Milton Keynes." Toss in the retro-beatnik jazz instrumental "Café Bleu" and rocking 1960s-style pop numbers ("How She Threw It All Away" and "Walls Come Tumbling Down!") and you have a strong portrait of a band who succeeded at much more than they were given credit for. "Long Hot Summer" and "My Ever Changing Moods" remain two of the defining hits of the 1980s, while album tracks such as "Headstart for Happiness," "Here's One That Got Away," and the strikingly beautiful "Changing of the Guard" show that Weller's music during this period was full of a real joy for life and its attendant disappointments and sorrows. Such limp-wristed tracks as the whining "Angel" and the somnambulistic "Waiting" (their worst single) show that the negative press that the band received was sometimes merited while the rest of this retrospective shows that the majority of their tunes were full of enthusiasm, invention, and melody. Weller viewed the band as a platform to explore non-rock-based pop music and this collection shows off the Style Council's strengths and weaknesses. Paul Weller's 1980s group was known as a singles outfit, but many of their best songs were actually album tracks and B-sides. Polydor has released a number of Style Council retrospectives over the years, but this one is actually one of the most interesting, as it paints a relatively complete musical portrait of the band. ![]()
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