THE STYLE COUNCIL’S FIFTH AND FINAL STUDIO EFFORT MODERNISM: A NEW DECADE TOOK ON NEAR-MYTHICAL STATUS WHEN IT WAS SHELVED BY THE BAND’S LABEL JUST BEFORE ITS PLANNED 1989 RELEASE. SO WERE THE FEARS OVER THEIR SUDDEN SHIFT INTO DANCE MUSIC FOUNDED?
JON O’BRIEN
FORGET ME NOTS
“ Iwasn’t jumping around the room, which I think is probably a bad sign,” Paul Weller remarked to Uncut about his initial response to the album that threatened to sink his career. It’s fair to say The Style Council’s label wasn’t exactly leaping for joy either. Indeed, on hearing 1989’s Modernism: A New Decade, appalled Polydor bosses decided they’d rather cut their losses than subject fans to the burgeoning movement known as deep house.
One might assume this was another case of record company narrow-mindedness. After all, those who’d followed Weller from The Jam had embraced everything from politicised Northern Soul and smooth sophisti-pop to languid R&B accompanied by the 80s most homoerotic video without barely batting an eyelid. Surely, some chunky Italo piano chords and four-to-the-floor beats wouldn’t leave them recoiling in horror?
Well, the near-riots (okay, some programme-ripping and loud booing) that broke out during an infamous pre-release gig at the Royal Albert Hall suggests there was method to Polydor’s apparent madness. Likewise, the lukewarm response to non-single Promised Land, a relatively faithful cover of Joe Smooth’s house anthem. Following the underwhelming sales of 1988’s Confessions Of A Pop Group, the band desperately needed a track that would restore them to former chart glories: instead, it limped in at a lowly No.27.
Of course, Modernism would eventually see the light of day in 1998, appearing on boxset The Complete Adventures Of The Style Council. But this was already nine years too late. Weller, alongside keyboardist Mick Talbot, vocalist Dee C. Lee and drummer Steve White, had taken the album’s snubbing as a sign and immediately disbanded. “It’s something we should have done two or three years ago,” acknowledged Weller soon after to the NME. “We created some great music in our time, the effects of which won’t be appreciated for some time.”
More than three decades on and the band’s fifth and final studio effort has still yet to receive such a re-evaluation. Yet there’s enough moments of inspiration among its eight club-focused tracks to suggest one is long overdue. Indeed, far from the
