It’s always great I find when
you discover that a band which you knew of turns out better than you first
thought. I knew of several Style Council tracks “Shout to the Top” etc. and
liked what I heard, while I have also been a big Jam and Paul Weller fan for a
while, however his 80s project The Style Council had sort of passed me by,
until now, and wow am I pleasantly surprised with what I have discovered.
When Paul Weller disbanded The
Jam in 1982 he went on to form a new group The Style Council, a sort of
jazz/R&B/pop hybrid, although some would term this fusion style of music sophisti-pop,
quite ludicrously. In actual fact, with this project, Weller, the lead
singer/songwriter and guitarist was exploring news sounds and styles which fell
outside the punk-rock, mod revival limitations of his previous band The Jam. So
there was a lot more emphasis placed on soulful melodies and rhythms. Weller
would be complimented in this new group by Mick Talbot on keyboards and Hammond
organ, Steve White on drums, and Dee C. Lee on backing vocals. The band went on
to record some very good and stylistically interesting albums in the mid-80s,
with the two stand out records being Café
Bleu in 1984 as well as Our Favourite
Shop in 1985. Weller would also use this project to continue with some of
the socio-economic and political themes he explored in his song writing with
The Jam, using it as an outlet to criticise Thatcher’s Britain and other issues
such as racism and sexism. This was seen in songs such as “A Stones Throw
Away”, and “Walls Come Tumbling Down”.
So, like with any band you are
discovering for the first time, you often turn to compilations to get a
snapshot or overview of their work, just to test the waters so to speak.
Thankfully, I found this great two disc compilation The Style Council: Gold and as far as compilations go, this one is
fantastic and does a great job in highlighting the stylistic diversity of the
band across two discs. There’s the soul of “You’re the Best Thing” and “Headstart
for Happiness”, the R&B of “Speak Like a Child” and “Our Favourite Shop”,
the jazz of “Have You Ever Had It Blue” and the dance/house sound of “Promised
Land”.
Although The Style Council did
not have overly significant commercial success compared to some of their more successful
contemporaries, they were a highly creative and stylistically interesting
group, and were quite different from what else was going on at the time
musically. You could not exactly pigeon hole them into one single genre and
they were not scared at all to experiment with different sounds, as evident
with their foray in to house music later in the decade. The band disbanded in
1989 and Weller went on to have a very successful solo career, but one thing is
sure, and that is that they certainly made a splash with their creative
pursuits in the mid-80s, bringing in different styles of music which might otherwise
may have been left behind as the 80s forged ahead with new wave and synth pop. The
Style Council are definitely worth checking out, if anything to show that there
was more to the 80s than just drum machines and synths and that bands were
still willing to take musical risks at a time when safe often seemed the way to
go.
A
- Sam
