Permanent Records: All Mod Cons

The Onion AV Club has selected a recording from one of my favorite bands, The Jam's All Mod Cons as one of their Permanet Records:

All Mod Cons was The Jam's first giant leap toward greatness. Its predecessor, This Is The Modern World, was an unfocused mess of mostly lackluster songs (plus a corny Wilson Pickett cover), and the whole thing bore only a hint of In The City's punky fire. Weller, barely 20 when All Mod Cons was released, dove deeper into his roots just as the nascent post-punk scene was turning futuristic: The Kinks became his new benchmark, and the album includes a faithful, forceful rendition of The Kinks' 1967 class-conscious "David Watts" (sung by bassist Bruce Foxton, whose voice in The Jam was quickly dwindling). All Mod Cons' first two songs—the title track and "To Be Someone (Didn't We Have A Nice Time)"—are surprisingly effective explorations of the dark side of stardom, but Weller is careful not to get too insular. Just coming off a humiliating U.S. tour opening for, of all bands, Blue Öyster Cult, Weller sounds wise and wounded beyond his years. Besides sterling, bittersweet power-pop in the form of "Billy Hunt" and "The Place I Love," All Mod Cons boasts the politically charged "'A' Bomb In Wardour Street," an apocalyptic nightmare set to slashing riffs and raw imagery. Most startling, though, is a pair of gorgeous folk ballads: "Fly" and "English Rose"—the latter still a staple of Weller's solo shows—are awkwardly tender moments of adolescent romance that gently offset the songwriter's punk-jabbed vitriol. The Jam's next two albums, Setting Sons and Sound Affects, have higher highs and lower lows, but All Mod Cons is the band's most uniformly excellent record—and one that captures Weller at a perfect spot between acidic indignation and careful yet ambitious songcraft.