The Jam

This was the Jam's second album from 1977, and while the strain was showing, this one is better than its reputation. The trio's professional mod tightness is still mixed in with spiky punk energy, but a couple of tracks -- "I Need You (For Someone)" and "Life from a Window" (which sounds like a missing gem from The Who Sell Out) -- offer up the kind of introspection and tenderness that was largely missing in the punk scene. "Modern World," "In the Street Today" and the sing-along "London Girl" also stand out. After this, the Jam took a giant artistic leap forward with All Mod Cons.

The naive, out-of-the-mouths-of-careerists clumsiness is endearing partly because it gets at truths too obvious to interest the sophisticated; the assumption that the word modern has sociopolitical import, for instance, is laughably autodidactic at one level and yet not without resonance when pounded out over and over. Would that the pounding were a little more flexible--this might rock as invitingly as their first if only it were varied with some appropriate covers. How about "Kicks"? (Grade: B+)