My Top 20 albums from 1979 No 5

SETTING SONS

Year Of Release: 1979
You Melody man? You Vicious Social Commentary boy? You make your choice NOW.
Best song: PRIVATE HELL

Track listing: 1) Girl On The Phone; 2) Thick As Thieves; 3) Private Hell; 4) Little Boy Soldiers; 5) Wasteland; 6) Burning Sky; 7) Smithers-Jones; 8) Saturday's Kids; 9) The Eton Rifles; 10) Heatwave.

If you have a legacy to live up to, you might as well follow it to a tee. And Paul Weller does; since both Pete Townshend and Ray Davies started releasing concept albums eventually, why can't he? Setting Sons is the band's first (and fortunately, last) foray into conceptuality, although it's certainly closer to "meekly conceptual" stuff like Face To Face than any of Paul's predecessors' rock operas. Mainly because Weller abandoned the concept in mid-air, and his idea of making a record about three old school friends and their different fates and careers in the modern world remained carried out only for about half of the album. (Peculiar guess: Mr Weller might have learned that Gentle Giant had already recorded a similar album, called, um, Three Friends, and decided to back off lest he got sued for plagiarism. Then again, not sure if he even suspected of that record's existence).
Anyway, the record is pretty good and powerful, but nowhere near as interesting in the overall sense as All Mod Cons, nosir. The only musical advance as such is Weller's ongoing conceptuality, and as you might know, conceptuality can often act as your worst enemy, making you concentrate on the lyrics and message more than on the music itself. Every now and then I get the idea that most of the melodies here were cobbled together in a matter of milliseconds: "Now there you are guys, here are some mighty fine character impersonation lyrics I've huffed and puffed upon all day, now play something ass-kicking and I'll try to sing along". On the other hand, there are almost no traces of the previous record's diversity: this is all straightahead garage rock again, granted, more intelligent and more carefully crafted than This Is The Modern World, but still suffering from the same old problems.
Of which lack of originality is obviously the most painful thing for me; every time I listen to, say, 'Little Boy Soldier', I can't help but be reminded of all those classic Kinks songs like 'Yes Sir No Sir', and instead of sitting for three and a half minutes thinking, 'hey, what a cool little multi-part anti-war number', I sit thinking, 'hey, I believe I'll go and put on Arthur right after the song is over... dang, why does three and a half minutes time take so goddamn long?'
Lack of hooks is another problem, and again a very actual one. You know, if after sitting ten times through a song I still can't remember how it goes, there's gotta be something wrong on this planet of ours, and I dare say it's not something wrong with me - yeah, this might seem presumptuous, but then again, I was raised on short poppy songs, not on twenty-minute long avantgarde jams or neo-ambient, and this was pretty much my main cup of tea for years. And yet there's nothing positive I could say about bland, hookless, undiscernible numbers like 'Thick As Thieves' or 'Burning Sky'. All the anthemic and ultra-sincere qualities of the former can go to hell with me - I might as well be listening to 'Thunder Road', then. It's generic power-chord based garage rock, just as, uhm, Bad Company's 'Simple Man' is generic blues-based soft-rock. Why should I prefer one to another?
That said, let's move on to the positive things in our reviewing lives, or else you might be wondering why on earth I'm giving this an 11 and not a 5 or something. The Jam were tremendously inconsistent, for sure, but that doesn't mean they had a bad sound going for them, and every once in a while even Setting Sons catches fire. In fact, once the melodic background even remotely starts approaching the intensity of the lyrics and Weller's rebellious snarl, the result is a masterpiece. 'Private Hell', for instance, begins with a grim glummy bassline not unlike something off a Motorhead album, and for once, Weller falls upon a really rich apocalyptic guitar tone - this is as close as the band ever came to having a chainsaw buzz, but all the power chords and the white noise actually come together in a memorable riff - not just a memorable riff, a frantic, thrashing musical apocalypse. And coupled with Weller's ominous, subdued utterings 'private hell... private hell', each one followed by a nervous drumburst (the song itself is about the routine life of a housewife - the band's own 'Mother's Little Helper'!), the song really gets me going.
Likewise, 'Eton Rifles' is easily the Jam's best political number, and one that could significantly compete with The Clash's best attempts at the political genre - lyrically, even better, considering Weller's ever-improving use of metaphoric images; and if you're not sick already of the song title serving as the main hook on Jam songs (on so many occasions!), you'll definitely enjoy the way Weller screams 'Eton rifles! Eton rifles!' in a half-appraising, half-scared tone. Other melodically strong songs would include 'Wasteland', a pretty poppy 'interlude' carried by an excellent recorder line and featuring cheery organs in the background, even if the lyrics deal with living in a 'drab and colourless world', but then again, the power of love will overcome even the drabness, I guess. Say, doesn't the lyrical message kinda remind you of a certain Who song, by the way? The one that starts with 'Baba' and ends with... well, you prob'ly know what I'm talking about, and if you don't, turn off your Jam immediately and go listen to the source first, you naughty impertinent boy.
To cut a long story short, 'Girl On The Phone' is a cute New Wavish rocker that rolls along nicely but never makes you gasp in awe; Bruce Foxton's 'Smithers-Jones' is the album's most "unique" cut, carried forward by a string quartet of all things, but just as unmemorable as anything else actually; 'Saturday's Kids' has a good beat, but no hook apart from a few perfunctory la-la-las; and the cover of Martha and the Vandellas' 'Heatwave' which closes the album is excellently done, but doesn't fit in in any way, and enough with the Who imitations already, guys (it's done very close to the Who's version on A Quick One, just as 'Batman Theme' was done very close to the Who's version on an obscure B-side, now available as the bonus track to, er, A Quick One)! We know your influences, we really do.
That said, Setting Sons has gone down in history as the Jam's masterpiece, so go ahead and roll yer own if you don't trust me. I'll be the first to admit the magic of 'Eton Rifles' and 'Private Hell', but the rest is related rather to Weller's improvement as a lyricist and the bleak pictures of everyday life he offers, even if I can only reiterate that essentially, Weller says nothing that hasn't been said by the Kinks ten years ago. But! He does say it with a lot more energy and aggression, that's for sure, and as far as late Seventies' pissed-off records go, I don't think there's a lot of competition for it, even considering the sheer number of pissed-off records at the time. The Clash, maybe, another album I'm not a major fan of. I must admit I could be a little biased here; see, the formula "fuck melody, just sing about life's troubles with a lot of feeling and a lot of pretentious lyrics" is quintessential for Russian rock, whether good or bad, and I've heard so many melody-less generic bores of the kind that I'm automatically sceptical towards anything like Setting Sons. But at least I hope I have given you some impression of what that thing sounds like, anyway.

Featured Songs'
1 Privaye Hell
2 The Eton Rifles