Café Bleu by The Style Council

Paul Weller is a very serious man. Adam Buxton tells the story of interviewing him on the radio one time and making the joke “Ah Weller, Weller, Weller, ooh - tell me more” which was received in stony silence. His previous band, the Jam, was laser focused on making sharp political points through a mix of mod and punk, without any of the joy or spontaneity of either of those genres.

With the Style Council he made an abrupt change into a mix of easy listening jazz, soul and hip-hop, seemingly aimed at the after dinner yuppie CD crowd. As a general rule if you have to state that you are cool or stylish, you are probably not, and councils are more generally associated with bin collections and the like, but we’ll let that go. It’s pleasant enough listening, with jazzy instrumentals and songs that sneak in some of his previous left wing politics hoping that the yuppies won’t listen too closely.

There’s a guest appearance from Tracy Thorn of Everything but the Girl which is probably the high point of the album, but then a couple of tracks later we come to A Gospel which has some bizarrely out of place rapping and drum machine beats, thankfully not performed by Mr Weller.

The overall effect is something of a curate’s egg and probably not something I’d go back to.