The Style Council

Guitarist and singer Paul Weller dissolved the Jam in 1982 while the group stood at the peak of its popularity, convinced that its punk-rooted approach could no longer accommodate the soul, R&B, and jazz influences he wished to explore. He therefore joined forces the following year with keyboardist Mick Talbot, previously of the mod-revival band the Merton Parkas, to form the Style Council; additional players were recruited according to the specific sound each project required. In this new setting the intellectual ambitions that had always shadowed Weller’s work moved into plain view.

Although grounded in American R&B, the Style Council’s records were executed with a glossy sheen of synthesizers and drum machines and refracted through European attitudes and production values. Weller’s lyrics remained sincere, yet his political convictions on the left grew sharper, targeting racism, joblessness, Margaret Thatcher, and sexism even as his fascination with high culture deepened. These conflicting impulses gradually eroded the band’s commercial standing; by the close of the decade it struggled to reach the upper reaches of the British Top 40 and Weller had shifted in public perception from idol to relic.

Issued in March 1983, the group’s debut single “Speak Like a Child” climbed straight to number four on the British charts. Three months afterward “The Money-Go-Round” reached number eleven while the band was completing the EP Paris, which surfaced in August and peaked at number three. November brought another hit, “Solid Bond in Your Heart,” also stopping at number eleven.

The first full-length album, Café Bleu, arrived in March 1984; two months later an altered track order appeared in the United States under the title My Ever Changing Moods. Drawing on jazz, soul, rap, and pop, the record represented Weller’s most stylistically far-reaching effort to date and became the Style Council’s biggest commercial success, reaching number five in the United Kingdom and number fifty-six in America. Its title track gave the band its first U.S. chart entry, peaking at number twenty-nine. During the summer of 1985 “The Walls Come Tumbling Down” became another British Top Ten single and was included on Our Favourite Shop, which topped the U.K. album chart and was issued stateside as Internationalists. The concert set Home and Abroad followed in spring 1986 and reached number eight.

“It Didn’t Matter,” released in January 1987, proved to be the Style Council’s final Top Ten single. February brought The Cost of Loving, an album steeped in jazz-tinged soul that, despite poor notices, climbed to number two in Britain. That spring the single “Waiting” failed to enter the Top 40, indicating a steep decline in popularity. July 1988 saw the release of Confessions of a Pop Group, whose second side contained the ten-minute orchestral suite “The Gardener of Eden” and whose overall tone struck many as the height of Weller’s self-regard; the album charted at number fifteen yet met with widespread disapproval. A 1989 compilation, The Singular Adventures of the Style Council, nevertheless reached number three. Later that year Weller submitted a new album reflecting his growing interest in house and club music to Polydor, which rejected the project and dropped both the band and its leader.

Weller and Talbot formally disbanded the Style Council in 1990. The following year Weller began a solo career that restored him to critical and popular favor by the mid-nineties, while Talbot continued performing both alongside Weller and on his own.