THE STYLE COUNCIL

THE COMPLETE ADVENTURES OF
THE STYLE COUNCIL
(1998)
320 KBPS

Given the blockbuster success of the Jam's exhaustive box set Direction Reaction Creation, perhaps it was inevitable that Polydor would give the Style Council a similar treatment, but the 1998 release of the five-disc box set The Complete Adventures of the Style Council was still a bit of surprise — there never was much interest in their catalog following their 1990 disbandment. Fortunately, Polydor took a chance and assembled The Complete Adventures, a lavish box set containing all of the group's singles and albums, minus the live Home & Abroad but including the notorious unreleased 1989 record A Decade of Modernism, which the label allegedly rejected because it found Weller turning toward house music. As it turns out, A Decade of Modernism wasn't that far afield from what the Style Council was exploring from their inception, as the chronological running order of the set makes clear. The sequencing is a blessed occurrence, since it's easy to trace their development over the years. Instead of an aberration, the Style Council seems like a natural extension of the Jam's final record, The Gift, and every one of their subsequent records makes more sense than before. That doesn't mean the music is always compelling. No matter how interesting some of Weller's ideas were, they didn't always work, and he wrote way too many pompous, directionless songs to have The Complete Adventures rank with Direction Reaction Creation. (There are also too many Mick Talbot instrumentals, but that's another story.) For most listeners, including some serious Weller fans, the Style Council is best appreciated as a singles band, but for the dedicated, The Complete Adventures reveals that the Style Council, no matter how maddening they could be, were a group that continually reinvented themselves, occasionally making some remarkable music along the way.

Disc 1
1. Speak Like a Child
2. Party Chambers
3. Money-Go-Round, Pt. 1 & 2 [Bevans, Bert Alernate Remix]
4. Headstart for Happiness
5. Mick's Up
6. Long Hot Summer
7. The Paris Match
8. Le Départ
9. Solid Bond in Your Heart
10. It Just Came to Pieces in My Hands
11. My Ever Changing Moods [12" Version]
12. Mick's Company
13. Spring, Summer, Autumn
14. Mick's Blessings
15. The Whole Point of No Return
16. Me Ship Came In!
17. Blue Café
18. The Paris Match
19. My Ever Changing Moods
20. Dropping Bombs on the White House
21. Gospel

Disc 2
1. Strength of Your Nature
2. You're the Best Thing
3. Here's One That Got Away
4. Headstart for Happiness
5. Council Meetin'
6. The Big Boss Groove
7. Shout to the Top!
8. Ghosts of Dachau
9. The Piccadilly Trail
10. Soul Deep [Bevans, Bert Remix]
11. Walls Come Tumbling Down!
12. The Whole Point II
13. Bloodsports
14. Spin' Drifting
15. Homebreakers
16. All Gone Away
17. Come to Milton Keynes
18. Internationalists
19. Stone's Throw Away
20. The Stand Up Comic's Instructions
21. Boy Who Cried Wolf

Disc 3
1. A Man of Great Promise
2. Down in the Seine
3. The Lodgers
4. Luck
5. With Everything to Lose
6. Our Favorite Shop
7. (When You) Call Me
8. Have You Ever Had It Blue? [Uncut Version]
9. Mr. Cool's Dream
10. It Didn't Matter
11. All Year Round
12. Right to Go
13. Heavens Above
14. Fairy Tales
15. Angel
16. Walking the Night
17. Waiting
18. The Cost of Loving
19. A Woman's Song
20. Francoise

Disc 4
1. Wanted
2. The Cost of Loving [12" Version]
3. Life at a Top Peoples Health Farm [Um & Argh Mix]
4. Sweet Loving Ways
5. It's a Very Deep Sea
6. The Story of Someone's Shoe
7. Changing of the Guard
8. The Little Boy in a Castle/A Dove Flew Down from the Elephant
9. The Gardener of Eden (A Three Piece Suite)
10. Why I Went Missing
11. How She Threw It All Away
12. Iwasadoledadstoyboy
13. Confessions 1, 2, & 3
14. Confessions of a Pop-Group
15. In Love for the First Time
16. I Do Like to Be B-Side the A-Side/The Mixed Companions

Disc 5
1. Promised Land [Longer Version]
2. Can You Still Love Me?
3. Long Hot Summer '89
4. Everybody's on the Run/Modernism: A New Decade
5. A New Decade
6. Can You Still Love Me?
7. The World Must Come Together
8. Hope (Feelings Gonna Getcha)
9. That Spiritual Feeling
10. Everybody's on the Run
11. Love of the World
12. Sure Is Sure