The Gift (1982)

To their credit, Bruce Foxton's basslines are as smooth and melodic as they've ever been on The Gift, and Rick Buckler's drumming is ferocious throughout this album, and on the non-album tracks like "Beat Surrender" and "Bitterest Pill I Had To Swallow". Listening to all six of these albums together, I expected to come away with Sound Affects as my clear favourite, but as it turns out, I have two takeaways (curries, perhaps). I love the ambition of both Setting Sons and The Gift, and I found Sound Affects less cohesive; and, my favourite Jam album is their greatest hits collection, especially if it includes b-sides.

Also, I have a strange obsession with songs which appear to be rooted in the Dr. Who theme, and "Just Who Is The 5 O'clock Hero" fits that bill. "Trans-Global Express" is just too weird, and again, Buckler beats the hell out of it. "Town Called Malice" is just a subtle reminder that this album is, unfortunately, just named after the songs, rather than a play on words, and I'm disappointed that the album wasn't called "A Town Called Malice". Oh well. Overall, though, this one just leaves me wondering why I don't listen to it more. Absolute belter.
It is possible though, that when this album loses me, it's because it is such a belter. A song like "That's Entertainment" hits you hard where it hurts because it feels desperate, in a way "Town Called Malice" doesn't, because it sounds so good. I miss the ballads of the earlier albums. Paul's lyrics work well with sparse instrumentation. This is great though:

A whole street's belief in Sunday's roast beef
Gets dashed against the Co-op
To either cut down on beer or the kids new gear
It's a big decision in a town called Malice

Professionally, I am working with TEI Publisher, and, well, it's quite impressive. In the past, I have worked with DITA and DocBook, which are less useful since the extra semantic tags in HTML5. TEI has a layer of precision that I find quite exciting. Hopefully this will be useful on my current project.

But that's it. These songs definitely are a gift, and I will be going back and adding more about the singles I missed, like "Going Underground". If Paul Weller had stopped after The Jam, that would be an impressive legacy. Obviously, that was not the case. Much of the overt politicization which I tend to attribute to The Jam is possibly better attributed to Setting Sons and a number of singles like "Going Underground", and many early songs that I have enjoyed are much more personal in nature, although songs like "In The City" or "This is Modern World" definitely contributed to the "youth explosion" vibe.