Consumer Guide Album

The Style Council: Internationalists [Geffen, 1985]
One reason Paul Weller's rock and roll never convinced non-Brits was his reedy voice, which he has no trouble bending to the needs of the fussy phonographic cabaret he undertook so quixotically and affectedly after retiring the Jam. I'm sure the move has cost him audience, but the new format suits the specifics of his socialism. A self-made Fabian rather than a would-be demagogue, he hopes to inspire militance with description and analysis. My Ever Changing Moods was so moody it flirted with incoherence, but here the politics are concealed on the surface of a fluent if not seamless Europop that goes down easy. B+