Sound Affects – The Jam – November 1980 - Polydor

I don’t think it’s possible to overstate how each and every release by a favourite artist or band was greeted in that halcyon period between the ages of about 13 to 23. Now obviously this feeling doesn’t go away entirely but it seems it loses something, an urgency perhaps. For me this period coincided with the years, 1975 – 1985. A period that can easily be said to contain at least 3 of the most fantastic years in popular British music. Which three? I’ll let you figure it out!

The Jam have always been important to me. I had just turned 18 when this album was released with almost unbearable anticipation amongst me and my mates who were really into the band and the new ‘second wave of Mod’ movement. Paul Weller had become an icon to me; I copied his stylistic leanings, and I then added more than a nod to the Beatles as well. There’s so much to love about this, the band’s fifth album. Their previous release, ‘Setting Sons’ had been a fantastic album, dense, angry with some fantastic songs but Sound Affects was very much a change of direction that matched a new decade. It had a sixties feel to it, something quintessentially English. It felt like a natural progression from Beatles through Kinks via the Small Faces. Yet it had a funky bass driven feel to some of the tracks. Weller has always stated that it was influenced by ‘Revolver’ evident across a swathe of tracks and perhaps more surprisingly Michael Jackson’s ‘Off The Wall’.

The band had a tremendous amount of creative control, including the sleeve design which aped the artwork found on BBC sound effects albums. A series of images many of which were mentioned in the album’s lyrics. The back cover had a massive stylistic nod towards the Revolver era fabs in terms of clothes and the studio pictures. Also noteworthy was the Shelley extract from the Mask of Anarchy. A call to arms for the oppressed.

The album opens with ‘Pretty Green’ a paean to the power of money and disposable consumerism and is followed by the dreamy, almost confessional love song ‘Monday’ with its cyclical refrain and
expressions of self-doubt, self-awareness and desire to change – all for the right girl of course. The pace is picked up with a sense of urgency underpinned by a brilliant backline of Foxton on bass and Buckler on drums on the superb ‘But I'm Different Now’. A rhythm section that powered the Jam to great effect, giving the band a full and powerful heft. Weller’s choppy guitar lines, the swooping bassline and the ‘la la las’
have all the hallmarks of a mid-sixties pop classic. Here the song highlights the list of mistakes that an errant lover has made but of course ‘He’s different now and so glad she’s his girl’.

‘Set The House Ablaze’ is an attack on conformity and alludes to a fascistic form of control through the military. This really could have been more suited stylistically perhaps to the Setting Sons album, a thematic or distant forebear to ‘Funeral Pyre’, the standalone single released the following year. ‘Set The House Ablaze’ is possessed of a martial drumbeat, which linked with the whistling and the la la la fade-out gives the track a feel of marching and torchlight – an undercurrent of jackboots and bullies, something to be feared, something that hints at the darkness within mobs. As relevant in 2025 as it was in 1980.

Side One ends on a massive high with not only two of the best songs on the album but also in the band’s entire career. ‘Start!’ owes so much to George Harrison’s Taxman, particularly the bassline generously provided by Paul McCartney that it created a level of criticism that took away from the song’s undoubted brilliance. Sure, it channels ‘Revolver’ and the aforementioned ‘Taxman’ but it is a brilliant call to the power of connection and feeling. Squalls of feedback lead guitar and a steady, unflashy metronomic beat provided brilliantly by Rick Buckler lend the single and therefore the album a Revolveresque mood, tone and ambience. Released as a single it entered the chart at #3 and become the Jam’s second number one. The thrill of seeing the band on Top of the Pops was almost as fantastic as seeing them live.

The closer for side one is the elegiac ‘That’s Entertainment’ a paean to the mundanity and unexpected thrills of working-class life as experienced by an articulate and thoughtful young man. My favourite track on the album then and now. As a grammar schoolboy with imposter syndrome, I identified with the song and the world it held a mirror to. Although it was never officially released as a single, but a German import entered the charts at #21 despite its rarity – of course I bought it! In this song Weller creates an evocation of life as it was lived by thousands of young men and women – almost a soundscape for life in Thatcher’s Britain. Weller claims it was written quickly after coming home from the pub – however despite the apparent ease with which it was written the song hits hard. The strummed acoustic guitar and the accompanying bass coupled with another chiming La la la chorus brings to mind a long lineage of melodic sixties bands – The Kinks and The Small Faces spring to mind here. The gritty urban settings of “..ripped up phone booths, sirens screaming and stray dogs howling” are lyrically juxtaposed with a melody that is all sweetness and yearning. “Cuddling a warm girl and smelling stale perfume” still manages to evoke a sort of romanticism that eschews the typical love song of the time.

Side Two opens with a personal highlight of the album. ‘Dream Time’. It opens with 40 seconds of backwards guitars swirling ethereal vocals and was touted as a prospective single before ‘Start!’ was eventually chosen. To be honest it would have been a brave choice but somehow, I can’t see the various Smashey and Niceys at the poptabulous Radio One EFF EM allowing the record to build to its fantastic opening. A thrilling 4 minutes of power chords and a superbly tight rhythm section. Bruce Foxton’s bass playing is fluid and underpins another lyrically whip smart Weller observation on commercialisation and the commodification of everything, including love, which ‘comes in frozen packs bought in supermarkets’.

It is no criticism to say that side two lacks some of the brilliance of side one. ‘Man in the Cornershop’ ties a plaintive melody complete with the now customary La La La refrain to a lyric which sums up the seemingly permanent class struggle and the politics of envy which was prevalent in 1980s British society. Reminiscent lyrically of The Kinks more observational songs such ‘Well Respected Man’ – but as this is Weller the observations are more acerbic and less forgiving. The critique of the Church’s pretensions to egalitarianism – ‘God created all men equal’ and the different classes to which each separate character belongs gives this song some real political heft. The various elements of the class system and I have even seen a reference to Marxist representations of class explored by Weller. I suspect it is forensically observational rather than a rehashed politics essay masquerading as a song!

‘Music for the last couple’ is the album’s weakest link. I understand it’s art pop and a collaboration writing wise. The track is only the second time all three band members get a writing credit – the other being Funeral Pyre – but it is the weakest link on what is otherwise a superb album. My opinion, for what it’s worth, is the band missed a trick here. Liza Radley the B-side of the Start! 7” would have made the perfect album track and its placing in the middle of the second side would elevate this already excellent set of songs into a 10/10. I actually created my own version of the album on Spotify by swapping the two tracks and it really is marvellous – try it and let me know what you think.

The penultimate track is a funky, horn laden poppy number ‘Boy about Town’ and it’s hard not to smile at such an uplifting and enjoyable offering. Again, there’s a sense of a Beatles influence with a ‘Good day Sunshine’ vibe about the track. Whimsical and carefree with just a hint of dissatisfaction or edge. The joy of Paul Weller’s writing is that it’s nuanced. Angry, articulate, but uplifting and celebratory as well. it glides along with a couple of slightly disconcerting tempo changes that keep you on your feet whilst listening.

The album closes with ‘Scrape Away’. Powerful, biting and aggressive. It carries that martial beat that is prevalent on the angrier songs and hints at violence and danger. Addressing an unnamed but obviously cynical opponent the song lends itself to many interpretations, but I can’t help but feel this as a total rejection of nascent Thatcherism and its deformed Frankenstein creation of yuppyism. Britain in 1980 had strikes, social unrest, high unemployment and riots but it was also birthing a new class; a stratum of society obsessed with ostentatious expressions of wealth, self interest and conspicuous consumption all whilst sticking up two fingers to the poor and vulnerable. Whoever this object of Weller’s ire is they certainly know how he feels. ‘You've given up hope you're jaded and ill. The trouble is your thoughts are a catching disease’. Musically it is driven by that powerhouse rhythm section, Foxton’s bass powerful and driving, Weller’s spitting lyrics augmented by some chiming chords that build in intensity and offer a hint as to the next single, Funeral Pyre which will be released six months later in 1981.

Overall, a tour de force. A fantastic snapshot of Britain as it enters a new decade and documenting the cares, thoughts and political ideals of a truly iconic singer songwriter. Listen to the album in its entirety and transport yourself into a different, yet disconcertingly similar, England. Past, Present and Future rolled into one in the slab of treasure.

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RATING: FIVE STARS