- The Gift (Deluxe Edition) · 1982
- The Gift (Remastered) · 1982
- Sound Affects · 1980
- In the City (Remastered) · 1977
- Setting Sons · 1979
- The Gift (Deluxe Edition) · 1982
- This Is the Modern World (Remastered Version) · 1977
- The Gift (Deluxe Edition) · 1982
- Sound Affects (Deluxe Version) · 1980
- Sound Affects · 1980
- All Mod Cons (1997 Remaster) · 1978
- All Mod Cons (1997 Remaster) · 1978
- 20th Century Masters - The Millennium Collection: The Best of the Jam (Remastered) · 1978
Essential Albums
- After the apotheosis of Sound Affects, The Gift exhibits early signs of dissolution within the Jam. Yet even as the trio’s all-for-one ethos was cracking they put forth the most diverse set of material of their career. The cascading rhythms and effects-laden guitars of “Happy Together,” “Precious,” and “Circus” push the Jam closer to the work of contemporaries like U2 and the Police. On the other hand, songs like “Ghosts,” “Trans-Global Express,” and “The Gift” indulge Paul Weller’s passion for R&B-inflected power pop. The Jam’s shift away from concise, kinetic rock would soon spur the departure of Bruce Foxton and Rick Buckler, while Weller would continue to develop his R&B technique in the Style Council. The Jam’s parting shot ended up being “Town Called Malice,” a song whose portrait of a decaying community is belied by an uptempo, if wistful, Motown shuffle. Still it is a stanza from “Ghosts” that stands as the best epitaph for a group who knew how to combine excitement and melancholy: “So why are you frightened - can't you see that it's you / At the moment there's nothing - so there's nothing to lose / Lift up your lonely heart and walk right on through.”
- A musical bridge between youth and adulthood, Sound Affects is a showcase for The Jam’s versatility and Paul Weller’s range of ideas. While “But I’m Different Now” and “Set the House Ablaze” are ferocious, pop-spiked punk tunes, Weller expands his vision with the working-class vignettes of “Pretty Green” and “Man in the Corner Shop.” The band’s musicality blossoms in the gloomy daydreams and Who-like harmonies of “Monday,” but the centerpiece is “That’s Entertainment,” an affectionately melancholic sketchbook of blue-collar London.
- Anchored by a cover of the Kinks’ “David Watts,” All Mod Cons is the point where Paul Weller trades in the teenage anthems of the young Pete Townshend for the more nuanced portraitures of Ray Davies, and he doesn't miss any opportunity to observe how success has tinted the world around him. Like “David Watts,” “To Be Someone (Didn’t We Have a Nice Time)” and “Mr. Clean” are scathing satires of upper-crust success, while “All Mod Cons” lashes out at the phony friends that accompany fame and fortune. It’s hard to imagine anyone else pulling off “English Rose,” a disarmingly heartfelt ode to the United Kingdom that avoids smarmy flag waving. In “‘A’ Bomb in Wardour Street” and “Down in the Tube Station at Midnight” Weller paints pictures of sudden violence in the city. The tone of the songs goes beyond anger, and instead offers the sense of betrayal, confusion, and resignation that always accompanies such incidents. All Mod Cons marks a musical and thematic turning point for the Jam, but those last two songs in particular elevate Weller to the ranks of Davies and Townshend.
Albums
Music Videos
- 2010
- 2010
- 1982
- 1981
Artist Playlists
- Succumb to the beat surrender!
- Literate punk and tuneful Britpop with a hat tip to the mod legends.
- Scathing social critique and doomed street-level romance.
- Sharp and dynamic mod pop, played with punk aggression.
Live Albums
About The Jam
The Jam burst from the crucible of British punk with a style that simultaneously defied the movement’s scorched-earth attitude toward the past and pointed a way beyond the genre’s borders. The Woking-based trio of singer/guitarist Paul Weller, bassist Bruce Foxton, and drummer Rick Buckler were schoolmates who’d already been together for years when they released their 1977 debut LP. In the City bore a speedy, sharp-edged sound bringing punk’s anger and energy to the influences of ’60s mod (The Who, Small Faces) and soul, with a natty visual style to match. Weller was still a teen, but his songs were already fusing passion, poetry, and politics in a manner beyond his years. Over their next couple of albums, their sound became more nuanced without losing its power-trio immediacy. By decade’s end, The Jam were standard-bearers for a full-fledged mod-revival movement (The Chords, Secret Affair, et al). In the early ’80s they reached a musical and commercial peak in the UK—they never troubled the top of the charts elsewhere—with the masterfully eclectic Sound Affects (sporting singles like the Beatles-esque “Start!” and the acoustic-guitar-driven social plaint “That’s Entertainment”) and the No. 1 album The Gift, which expanded their sound further to include funk grooves and brass arrangements. In 1982, a restless Weller broke the band up, quickly starting the successful soul-pop group The Style Council and later becoming a respected solo artist. Just after the breakup, The Jam ensured they’d be missed all the more by releasing the non-LP single “The Bitterest Pill (I Ever Had to Swallow),” a string-laden, soul-inflected ballad that proved a perfect elegy for them.
- ORIGIN
- Woking, Surrey, England
- FORMED
- 2007
- GENRE
- Rock