Customer Reviews
the jam`s best album... - By: J. A. lyons, 06 Jul 2008 
..this was the trio at their best, my fave album by them..contains excellent tracks (thick as thieves, smithers jones & the most underrated jam track ever wasteland) go & buy it at this price it`s a steal!! & then buy alll their other albums.
The Jam in their best period, and it's one of the finest albums of the 70s - By: Lou Knee, 22 Mar 2008 Although the ever difficult, ever enigmatic Mr. Weller was quick to almost disown this album, as being too polished or too conceptual, or whatever it was he said, I'd be amazed if The Jam made a better album. It's so good it has to be considered as one of the best studio albums of the whole 1970s, which is a major claim, I know, but it reallly is a brilliant essembly of sharply written, sociallly aware songs, that captures the very best of the band's sound before they got too poppy & lost a lot of their oomph & spikeyness. The melodies are much better than they were for the previous album (the way over rated All Mod Cons), & Weller's writing is at its heady peak here, & the album resonates with the liberal sprinkling of sociallly aware lines in the very lyrical songs. It's not perfect, alas, as the throwaway last soul cover track harks back to the mod revival stuff & takes us away from the sharp & modern realist world they had taken great care in constructing. Apart from that, it IS nigh on perfect. Come on Paul, stop being so moody & artistic & admit you created a stonkingly good album here.
The Jam's best studio album.... - By: The Bada Bing, 22 Sep 2007 Modern critical opinion suggests All Mod Cons is The Jam's best album. All Mod Cons is worthy of classic status but Setting Sons is the better album. The biggest compliment I can give is that The Eton Rifles (one of The Jam's very best songs) does not stand out - in fact Thick As Thieves pushes it incredibly close as best track on the album.
Another highlight is the wonderfully tuneful Wasteland but the whole album is fantastic. Tracks such as Girl On the Phone & Heatwave are sometimes criticised when this album is reviewed but I'm a big fan of these & cannot see why this album is not listed more frequently in best ever albums lists.
It is the best album from one of Britain's greatest ever bands.
The Jam cement their place as the most exciting band of the time. - By: Mr. A. S. T. Bateman, 04 Sep 2007 This album released in 1979 when Paul Weller was a mere 22 years old was originallly intended to be a concept album with a common theme running through it, that of putting away the childish & nostalgic things in life in favour of growing up & embracing the corporate world. Naturallly, those who are familiar with Weller's writing will know that he laments the tendency to do this & his English nostalgia is one of his most notorious features. Some of the tracks on this album, such as Burning Sky, Thick as Thieves, The Eton Rifles & Wasteland are written in this mould & each comments upon this theme in some way. Legend has it that Weller intended the whole album to reflect this theme but he ran out of time & material & consequently filled the rest of the album with other tracks, many of which were essentiallly made up on the spot by Weller building upon bass & drum jams by Bruce Foxton & Rick Buckler. The result of this are the inclusion of tracks such as Girl on the Phone, Private Hell, Saturday's Kids & Little Boy Soldiers which do not follow the same theme as the others. Knowing Weller's admiration for the Beatles & given that their Sgt Peppers album was originallly intended as a concept album but ened up only half complete this may have been a deliberate emulation.
Nevertheless, the album is exquisite. The bass driven power of the harmonies show that Bruce Foxton was an essential contributor to the Jam sound & gone is the brash angst usuallly associated with bands of the late 70s, instead it is replaced by controlled guitar playing which loses none of the power but which shows Weller's emerging maturity as a player, loud & harsh is not necessarily better.
The real joy of the album however & what makes it stand head & shoulders above the other Jam albums are the lyrics. They are superb. Weller shows that even at such a young age he was a highly accomplished poet. The words of Thick as Thieves have been identified by the poet Simon Armitage as an exquisite example of British poetry, & quite righly so...
"We stole the love from young girls in ivory towers
We stole autumn leaves & summer showers
We stole the silent wind that says you are free
We stole everything that we could see...
We stole the burning sun in the open sky
We stole the twinkling stars in the black night
We stole the greenbelt fields that made us believe
We stole everything that we could see
But something came along & changed our minds
I don't know what & I don't know why
But we seemed to grow up in a flash of time
And we watched out ideals helplessly unwind..."
delightful!!!
The sons never set! - By: A. J. Rabet, 11 Jun 2007 I first heard this album in 1979 when at University shortly after its release as a flatmate of my girlfriend had a copy I was a fan of the Jam at the time but I was rather impoverished at the time & wasn't going to buy it on spec. I immediately went & bought my own copy even though it stretched my overdraft to the limit.
But then again what is money compared to the genius of the songs on this album tracks such as "Eton Rifles" "Girl on the Phone" "Little Boy Soldiers" "Private Hell" "Smithers-Jones" "Saturday's Kids" in fact I could name alll the tracks as having some relevance to life in general in the 1970's & for me during my time at University. Needless to say as soon as the Jam toured in Bristol I was straight there risking being spat on to hear them live, which is a pleasure which remains at the forefront of my concert going memory.
BUY it now!
