The Style Council: Cardiff, St. David’s Hall
David Quantick, New Musical Express, 1984
FIRST OFF, SOME striking things. The man who used to specialise in doing soul songs really badly is now fond of doing funk standards reasonably well. (FACT: Eight out of ten Mods would still rather see Paul Weller cripple 'In the Midnight Hour' than watch him get 'The Razor's Edge' nearly right.) Mick Talbot has a singing voice almost exactly like Paul Weller's. The drummer, Steve, wears a glove to express solidarity with the oppressed peoples of the world. Paul Weller still dresses badly.
Yup, Paul Weller still dresses badly. This is part of the problem: little style. Weller's intended plans to create a great big furnace of burning soul passion and socialist power have often resulted in very ordinary records onto which a sparky brass section has been tacked. Just as Weller fondly imagines himself to be a snappy dresser and instead wears a yellow tracksuit top and a pair of trousers quite possibly fashioned from Dralon, so he writes would-be soul numbers that have great big cracks in them where the influences show through. It is one thing to know how The Isley Bros. produce a great guitar line; it is another to keep it to oneself and attempt to build on that fact. Paul does not know this, and so 'Ever-Changing Moods' is like 'Harvest For The World' speeded-up.
Weller, however, is a man who has a few redeeming graces. Even though wearing two-tone shoes and a skinny black tie, he wrote some of the best '60s-based pop-punk ever to graze the Top Five. And even while pretending to be French, he wrote 'Long Hot Summer', surely the summer-evening single of the '80s. His other two redeemers are his politics and his ability to turn a live show into something worth seeing. Those two things are very unusual. We shall not discuss the politics here, except to say that Paul Weller is a Labour voter and he dedicated one song to the miners and it wasn't mimed; but we shall now take a stroll to Cardiff's mighty St David's Hall.
The sound is not very good. 'Long Hot Summer' sounded like it would if you heard it while very drunk and were trying to stand up. Percussion and treble hurtled around the rafters like the things at the start of the Pearl & Dean advert. 'Mick's Up' sounded like a casserole a mess of instruments in a dark brown gravy. Nevertheless, the Style Council maintained several levels of enthusiasm or commitment, depending on whether you were the drummer, singer D.C. Lee, the bassist, or the badly dressed one.
Actually, it started dull but THEN 'You're The Best Thing' exploded in a cloud of wistfulness, forcefully dreamy, mesmerically beaty. Weller's voice found a high-tenor range that transformed the Woking barking to a gruff white soul tone. And at one moment, he leapt away from the microphone in the nearest he comes to a great dance movement and whooped "Ai-yeah-Hoo!!"
Yup, "Ai-yeah-HOO!!". This is the best thing about the Style Council. Although they are patently unable to copy, or rather mimic, their soulist idols, they often accidentally create little pop gems. No way is Weller's whoop an example of a great soul singer letting it all out; nevertheless that whoop is a high point of modern pop history.
Some more high points; a storming 'Strength Of Your Nature', an insanely cartoon-poppy 'One Nation Under A Groove', a version of 'Headstart For Happiness' where all three vocalists actually exuded unity in strength, and a killer new song called 'A Man Of Great Promise' with a gorgeous tune to it, all showing that subtlety can occasionally be exchanged for either the graceful pop slide or the maniac-
barnstorming route.
Tonight I heard many mud-washed songs. I also heard a few shards of brilliance special merit should go to a fiery version of 'Money-Go-Round' that actually converted 15 members of the audience to socialism during the keyboard solo. From which we may conclude that although Weller's results and ambitions rarely connect, this may quite possibly be a good thing. A socialist Hall & Oates is infinitely less preferable to a tank division that thinks it's the Isley Brothers.
© David Quantick, 1984