Setting Sons

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I have to say that when I played the four concept album songs as a self-made suite, I felt a deep sense of loss . This is the second song Weller dashed off to meet the record company’s deadline, and all I can say is that Paul Weller is one hell of a dasher. Setting Songs was ranked the fourth best album of 1979 by NME, with "The Eton Rifles" and "Strange Town" ranked at numbers one and five among the year's top tracks. As noted, this is not the dispassionate observer whose perspective remains closed to the reader, but a very active participant who has observed his father wasting his life away and wants to do something about it. But when he jumps several steps down the Camelot Wheel to introduce an Eb major (almost a key change within a key change), my blonde brain shorted out and I had to hit the reset button.

Disc two features 18 demos and tracks previously released on the ‘Extras’ collection, many of them previously unavailable, plus the four-track session for icnonic BBC Radio 1 broadcaster John Peel in October 1979. The answer to the question is “no chance at all,” which is only partly a reference to the weapons and superior physicality of Eton lads.

Writing about someone close to you presents a challenge because you always run the risk of excessive sentimentality and muddled emotions. The in-verse key change (moving from G major to E major) feels forced and pointless and the depiction of the lives of working-class youth doesn’t yield an “aha” moment that grabs me. Another notable song from the album was Bruce Foxton's "Smithers-Jones", originally a b-side to " When You're Young".

And while the Brighton live show is inessential, two of the three newly unearthed songs, Weller’s “Simon” and “Along The Grove”, are stark, caustic and could have been contenders. The DVD contains five original promo videos, six 1979-80 performances on ‘Top Of The Pops’ and two on the ‘Something Else’ show. Disc three is a complete, never-before-released, 20-track Jam performance at the Brighton Centre in December of that year. The epic single Eton Rifles is another highlight before we come to the two weak tracks, the first of which is Foxton's Smithers-Jones. At this juncture in the larger story, the country has decided that the soldiers must march off to war (where or why are both unknowns).

extra interesting as it kind of tied in with an article i wrote on hawklords 25 years on, another half realised concept album!