In one sense, assembling a Style Council collection isn’t all that hard, since the high points often occurred on singles.
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Long Hot Summers differs from the many, many Style Council compilations released over the years by being co-compiled by Weller as part of a Style Council reclamation project that also includes a documentary film for Sky Arts (the movie is rumored to be headed Stateside sometime next year). But Long Hot Summers: The Story of the Style Council underscores that they were a band born of the moment who lived for the moment, and that moment had passed by the time the ’80s were half finished. Members of the Style Council-Weller and Talbot officially constituted the group’s lineup, but they retained a fairly stable set of players through the years-later blamed the band’s prominent position on the anti-Thatcher Red Wedge tour in 1986 as halting their momentum. They embraced political activism, fighting against prime minister Margaret Thatcher with such enthusiasm it nearly consumed them. The mysterious, uncredited Cappuccino Kid-widely believed to be Paolo Hewitt, a confidant and biographer of Weller’s until they had a falling out in the 2000s-penned righteous manifestos for the band’s liner notes.
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They swapped punk and mod for jazz and soul as musical touchstones, and the group expanded this obsession through the ’80s, incorporating house and garage to an extent that their record label rejected their final album for veering too far into the dance-music realm. The group’s first single, “Speak Like a Child,” shared a title with a 1968 Blue Note LP by Herbie Hancock they designed the album cover of 1985’s Our Favourite Shop so that it spilled over with the books, fashion, music, and film they cherished most. Signifiers were a big deal for the Style Council. Here, he’s cavorting shirtless, so carefree he’s nearly camp, embracing the hint of sexual ambiguity with the same gusto with which he has a beatnik bongo player join their party. Weller scowled through most of the Jam, adopting the look intense young men wear when they’re seriously making serious music. In the video for 1983’s “ Long Hot Summer”-their third single and the song that lends its title to this new anthology-Talbot spends his time rowing a bare-chested Weller to a riverside picnic later, Tabot would literally carry Weller’s bags in the clip for “ Boy Who Cried Wolf.” Absurd as the images may be, there’s an endearing playfulness to the videos that’s telling. Only it's not quite as good.Weller enlisted Mick Talbot, a keyboardist who previously played with Jam disciples the Merton Parkas, as his lieutenant, but it was clear from the outset who was in charge. Tuneful, sometimes memorable, and often far from stupid, this Eurowise white funk comes from the same place musically as Culture Club and George Michael. And slowly it began to dawn on me that maybe Paul Weller's motives for disbanding the Jam weren't all that pure-that he knew damn well pop smoothies were taking over from guitar bands. The Singular Adventures of the Style Council īecause I thought it was my problem that I'd never listened hard after Internationalists, I put heavy time into these hits, if that's what they really were. My Ever Changing Moods was so moody it flirted with incoherence, but here the politics are concealed on the surface of a fluent if not seamless Europop that goes down easy. A self-made Fabian rather than a would-be demagogue, he hopes to inspire militance with description and analysis. I'm sure the move has cost him audience, but the new format suits the specifics of his socialism. One reason Paul Weller's rock and roll never convinced non-Brits was his reedy voice, which he has no trouble bending to the needs of the fussy phonographic cabaret he undertook so quixotically and affectedly after retiring the Jam. But there has to be undeniable music in here somewhere as well. Weller's unabashed working-class leftism is a treasure, and his charm is undeniable at any distance. Here he records relaxed lounge-soul tunes with a keyb-playing partner and as with the Jam's rock tunes it's unclear to a mere Yank what the big deal is.
Introducing the Style Council Ī rather lengthy "mini-LP" continues the strange and touching saga of Paul Weller, who gave up the Jam because fronting Britain's best-loved band had turned into a superstar routine. The Singular Adventures of the Style Council B.
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