All Mod Cons by The Jam

All Mod Cons, the Jam's third album, came out on Polydor on 3 November 1978 with Vic Coppersmith-Heaven producing, and it's the record where Paul Weller stopped sounding like a clever kid and started sounding like a writer. The title is a sly joke, estate-agent shorthand for all modern conveniences and a wink at the band's mod image, and the cover plays along by parking the trio of Weller, Bruce Foxton and Rick Buckler in an empty room.

Weller writes and sings most of it and cuts through with his Rickenbacker, while Foxton's basslines do the heavy lifting underneath. "David Watts" is a cheeky blast of '60s beat-group swagger, and "Down in the Tube Station at Midnight" is the killer, taut and menacing and riding one of Foxton's great bass lines. Punk energy, soul and beat-music roots, and a sharply English eye for social commentary. It reached No. 6 in Britain.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.