Style Council and Paul Weller drummer extraordinaire releases his first solo album as part of new Acid Jazz series, The Jazz Sessions.

A glorious tribute to his jazz routes and filmic influences, which features an imaginative reworking of TSC’s ‘My Ever Changing Mood

By Mr Tim Vickery – BBC South American Football Expert and eternal Modernista:

Steve in a pensive Pellicano mood (Pellicano saxony wool college scarf, made in England)

Over to Tim…

“I could never understand all the fuss about the end of The Jam.  True, it was disorientating to many – including this 17 year old – but it seemed like the right time.  The different musical paths were very clear.  A continuation would have ended up as a dull compromise embarrassing itself in stadium venues – the antithesis of all they stood for.  So thanks for the memories, and on we go.

The Style Council, on the other hand….

There was so much in there, so much still to be said, sung and done.  A good deal of the credit for the versatility of the whole project goes to Steve White, whose drumming, rooted in jazz, opened up so many possibilities and directions.  And all these years later, Whitey and his gang (Chris Hague on guitars and Joel White- no relation – on keyboards) are mining that seam in their new instrumental album.  Out on Acid Jazz, ‘Soul Drums’ by the Steve White Trio (click to buy) emerges from the minutes of a Council meeting.

SOUL DRUMS is available from ACID JAZZ RECORDS now : CLICK TO BUY

The influence is made explicit by a version of ‘Ever Changing Moods,‘ swathed in lovely hammond organ.  The hammond is the most ear-catching instrument in this collection of pieces.  Some of ‘Soul Drums’ comes across as a 60s-style output of English children of Jimmy Smith.  But with flute and some stabbing horns there’s also an early 70s jazz-funk feel, a little like the band that Donald Byrd put together for the 1974 album ‘Street Lady’– the one containing the magnificent ‘Lansana’s Princess.’

The mood is usually happily mellow (like their take on ‘Ever Changing Moods’) or joyfully upbeat.  But there is one stand out exception, ‘When The Tourists Leave,’ which with its late night sax is dripping in melancholy.  If a seaside resort could write ‘The Paris Match,’ then this is what it would sound like. It’s a great title, too, hauntingly evocative, and I think I wish it had been the last track on the collection.  ‘When the Tourists Leave’ would have rounded off things on the appropriate note, because so much of this has a holiday feel, and as a member of royalty so nearly said, holidays weren’t meant to last.

And for the rest of the material, we are on vacation!  We are anticipating the good times to come in the jazz-funk of ‘Changes,’

we are flirting away through the sweet horns of ‘Eye to Eye,’ we’re getting a bit merrily reflective to the Bossa Nova beat of ‘Song for Us Dads.’  And something exciting is happening to the frantic beat of ‘Running,’ with an urgency that is a little bit ‘Internationalists,’ a little bit something off the soundtrack to ‘Ocean’s Twelve.’

It is all very cinematic.  And there is one song that paints the clearest pictures in my mind, the one that comes closest to being as life changing as The Style Council were all those summers ago.  It’s called ‘Passing Through.’  Whitey gets it going with his brush sticks, and you wonder if he’s taking us down in the Seine.  But we’re going somewhere far lighter, fingers trailing in the surface of the water as the hammond, the vibes and the piano carry us on a little boat to a secluded restaurant on a Mediterranean island just as daylight turns to moonlight. 

Passing through?  No chance, mate.  I’m staying right here!

Written by and big thanks to: Mr Tim Vickery

Read more from Tim Vickery on INSTAGRAM

www.pellicanomenswear.com