The Style Council: The Singular Adventures Of The Style Council: Greatest Hits Vol. 1 (Polydor)
David Quantick, New Musical Express, 11 March 1989
THE COVER OF The Style Council's most blatantly angry single, 'Walls Come Tumbling Down', bears not a picture of rioting or the Prime Minister on a cross, but a photo of Mick Talbot wearing make-up and trying to look like Oscar Wilde's mate Bosie.
Similarly, the snappily-titled 'Wanted' has a sleeve bearing the word "WANTED OR WAITER THERE'S A FLY IN MY SOUP BY THE STYLE COUNCIL", making thousands who saw the poster campaign believe themselves the victims of a cruel but vague hoax. There's also a bit on the sublime 'Have You Ever Had It Blue' a tune of exquisite tenderness and big unrequition, where Paul Weller offers us the image of a trussed up milkman. And once more a nation asks: The Style Council – barmy or what?
TSC's willfulness extends further than being odd in interviews and wearing glasses with plaster on them for adverts; it runs through their records like a mad spine.
Weller is a top tune-writer, a frequently great singer, and TSC's incorporations of jazz, soul, funk, whatever have been much more than pastiche for some time now. Their career should have been a lot easier than it has been: I mean, tunes you can dance to are hardly unpopular, are they?
However, TSC seem obsessed with their, er, ever-changing moods; they act up, switch styles, tell jokes and make a House record. (For some reason, the idea of The Style Council making a House record is very weird indeed). Look at the stupid title of this album. It's got slightly dated jokiness followed by the annoying "funny" provocation of the "Vol. 1" Look at Weller when he smiles in adverts; he's smiling for a joke, like smiling is an impure and commercial thing, and he looks immensely smug and malevolent.
I love it. I may not want to enter New Faces with Paul as the new Cannon & Ball, but this surly, not-quite-funny humour is worth more than any chirpy prat rock group (why are rock groups so friendly these days? Is it because they're all shit?) or chart-desperate popsters. Like Elvis Costello, Weller twists and turns when he's in danger of running out of things to say, and unlike Morrissey, he doesn't repeat himself and go over the same tedious ground again and again.
I have no desire to own any TSC LPs apart from this; like all great pop, The Style Council's LPs are dubious experiments and the singles are the drug-crazed fun party of lust. These 14 drug-crazed etceteras, from top to bottom, are some of the strangest and most wonderful singles the radio has even been blessed with. Even if one of the best songs is called 'Life At A Top People's Health Farm' and starts with the sound of a toilet flushing.
Buy a copy! You'll love it! There won't be another one like it! Thank you! (9)
© David Quantick, 1989