![]() The magical misery tour screeches to a halt on Come To Milton Keynes. This grim situation gets the black comedy treatment on All Gone Away, where a playful Latin beat marks time as a tight community becomes a ghost town. Complex emotions are conveyed in simple lines like these: "Now our tears fall like rain as my mother walks me to my train/ with a kiss and a wave "Come home weekends, that's if I can save". It could be the farewell song for people living in places like Detroit and Puerto Rico. Take for instance the opening song, Homebreakers, which is about young workers forced to relocate for job opportunities. The violent confrontations of the miners' strike are long gone, but the fight for workers' rights and decent living wages is current news. Mick Talbot has called the album a diary of the times, but what's surprising, thirty years on, is how little has changed. May 29 marked the 30th anniversary of Our Favourite Shop. Weller never strayed far from his working-class roots, and he couldn't ignore the societal changes around him. However, the album lacked the raw angst that was taken for granted during Jam days. Mind you, Café Bleu was a big seller, even in America, where its title was changed to My Ever Changing Moods to capitalize on the band's first and only top twenty hit there. The singles and EPs drew inspiration from northern soul, cool jazz, and continental pop, yet this adventurous spirit failed to soar on the band's first album. Pop singles like Speak Like A Child and A Solid Bond were irresistible, and Money-Go-Round showed that Weller hadn't lost his convictions. It gave Weller, a man of instinct, a chance to start fresh. ![]() That he found a more willing partner in Mick Talbot goes without question. Musically, though, the transition to the soul-pop of The Style Council was less jarring, a move that had begun on The Jam's last records. That explains his departure from The Jam's in 1982, when the trio was at its peak, which left fans and band members in the lurch. When the forced march of life as a pop star reaches a dead end, he escapes with his boldest artistic moves. Box him in and he wiggles himself out like a double-jointed escape artist. For such a complex man, Paul Weller isn't hard to figure out.
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