Confessions of a Pop Group is the fourth full-length studio album by the English sophisti-pop band the Style Council, released June 20, 1988 by Polydor. After the critical failure of The Cost of Loving, tensions between Polydor and lead singer Paul Weller intensified, but Polydor paid Weller a hefty advance for the recording of Confessions. Backing vocalist Dee C. Lee became an official member during the sessions, while drummer Steve White left the group. The sessions were engineered by Jeremy "Jezar" Wakefield using two 24-track digital recorders, which allowed the group to experiment in ways they had not previously engaged before.
Confessions is split into two sides, the first side (The Piano Paintings) featuring pieces inspired by jazz and classical music, and the second side (also titled Confessions of a Pop Group) featuring a more familiar, upbeat funk sound. The stylistic differences between the two sides is an idea not unlike that employed on the first record Café Bleu. Its usage of suites has led some to consider it similar to a concept album. Weller was inspired by numerous artists on the album, including composer Erik Satie and the Beach Boys, and his socially conscious lyrics on the album are unusually vitriolic and bitter. Each song on the album is accompanied in the liner notes by a painting by Dan Davies.
With no hit singles and an unusual promotional strategy, Confessions was a relative commercial failure for the band, reaching only number 15 on the UK Albums Chart. The album received mixed reviews, with some citing its ambitions as successful and others feeling they were self-indulgent. In the years since its release, the album has seen numerous reappraisals, with some critics posing it as the band's best album and as one which captured the mood of late 1980s Great Britain. Weller continues to think highly of the album. It has been re-released several times. "How She Threw It All Away" and "Why I Went Missing" are often cited as lost Weller classics, having not been played live since the early 'rebirth' of Weller's solo career (around 1990/91). A key track from the album, "It's a Very Deep Sea," was featured when a reunited Style Council played the song at the end of a 2019 documentary about their work.
Background
After achieving critical and commercial success in 1985 and 1986, the Style Council's third full-length album, The Cost of Loving, was released in February 1987 to commercial success, reaching number 2 in the UK Albums Chart, but to hostile reviews from music critics.[ Allmusic review] The album, which featured soul music and American-style R&B inspired by Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis, was dismissed by one later critic as "bland," and several years later, the NME included the album in a list of fourteen albums that "should've been an EP".NME November 1991 issue. Later on in 1987, Red Wedge, a collective of musicians, including Style Council lead singer and writer Paul Weller, who had gathered to help spread support for the Labour Party among young voters, failed to displace the Conservative Party in the 1987 general election, and the collective soon disbanded.
The band's popularity was fading and the group were regularly being ridiculed in the music press, with criticism being aimed at Weller in particular. Tension between Weller and the band's record label Polydor was also prevalent, with the label becoming impatient with Weller's esoteric choices regarding musical direction and artwork. Weller was becoming more musically ambitious, and in early 1988 he and fellow band member Mick Talbot composed the songs for the band's fourth album, Confessions of a Pop Group, their most musically challenging project to date. The band set for recording the album with Polydor paying Weller a reluctant advance of £500,000. Tension between Weller and Polydor was especially prominent during the album's recording sessions.
Long time guest vocalist Dee C. Lee, who was pregnant with Weller's child and would soon become his wife, became an official member prior to the recording of the album, whereas drummer Steve White left the band to pursue a career with saxophonist Alan Barnes as the Jazz Renegades, who performed hard bop and Afro-Latin music. This left the Style Council to become a trio of Weller, Talbot and Lee. However, White still plays the drums on four songs on the album.
Recording Weller and Talbot chose to produce Confessions of a Pop Group alone so they could avoid arguments with outside producers, which had been an occurrence in previous recording sessions for the group. Weller elaborated, saying that self-producing Confessions was always their intention: "We don't like to repeat ourselves, we believe that progression is the most important thing." Jezar engineered the album and later described the sessions as "deeply satisfying on an emotional level." After his experiences working on The Cost of Loving, Weller was more confident with Confessions and told Jezar about things he wanted to try out for the first time, including classical concert harp on the song "The Gardener of Eden" and a capella vocals reminiscent of a barber shop quartet on "The Story of Someone's Shoe". Jezar later cited Confessions as raising the bar "of what we tried to achieve."
Jezar created a digital multitrack recorder setup using 48 tracks set across two separate 24-track Sony 3324 machines, giving him and the band the technical capability to try several things in the sessions they had not before. Using two 24-track machines rather than one 48-track machine allowed the band to use more production techniques on the album, including, in Jezar's recollection, "making perfect backup copies of projects, no cross-talk limitations (no need to plan what was recorded adjacent to a timecode track), being able to copy tracks further forward or further backwards in time (to change the musical 'feel'), back-up of multiple tracks (i.e. vocals) after you'd bounced or composited them down to free-up space, spinning-in (copy and paste) of one-off riffs and musical sections into other parts of a song, non destructive editing of multitracks [and] immensely complex, overlapping multitrack edits." He later said:
The group overcame the issue of deciding what a "normal" recording level for the machine's digital tape was by setting the machines' levels so that they and the SSL mixing desk had the same amount of headroom. The original version of "Mourning the Pass of Time" (the final part of "The Gardener of Eden" suite) was part of a demo with a 'feel' the band did not want to repeat, but the demo's musical structure faltered at the end, and using digital editing, Jezar rescued the part of the demo, re-arranged the order of the pieces, and blended it seamlessly into another version of it recorded several weeks later with a different setup, which Jezar cites as the biggest triumph of using digital recording, seeing as it may have been impossible to achieve this using analogue recording.
The drum machine-based second half of the album gave Jezar the opportunity to have fun with sequencing and programming. Weller was displeased with Jezar's initial mix of the album, feeling he copied too much from "modern productions from the charts," so Weller monitored the following mixes. "Initially, I thought his approach a little too conservative," Jezar recalled, "but in hindsight I'm glad of the way it worked out because the line I was going down would have made the result sound extremely dated - whereas I think the final result still stands up to scrutiny today."
Music
Confessions of a Pop Group is split into two distinct sides with their own individual names, namely The Piano Paintings (side one) and Confessions of a Pop Group (side two).The American edition swapped the sides around, so that Confessions of a Pop Group was side one and The Piano Paintings was side two. The Piano Paintings side features quieter pieces influenced by jazz and classical music, while the more upbeat Confessions side is closer to funk-style pop music. Writer John Reed notes that the album's split motif, complete with the usage of subtitles, hints that the album could be a concept album, a sentiment shared by another writer who felt the album is "edged towards concept album status" by featuring two ten minute epics. A promotional text for the album described it as "somewhat conceptual."Confessions of a Pop Group music book promotional item. By far the band's longest album with a length of almost 57 and a half minutes, it is advised consumers playing the LP version increase the volume of side two as it runs for over thirty minutes.
Writer Paolo Hewitt described the album as a highly experimental release, while another critic found it to be the group's most experimental album. James Masterton wrote it was the band's most diverse album, presenting an "at times random blend" of progressive rock, avant-garde and synthpop music. Describing the album's sound overall, journalist Michael Booth called the album a "cool pop/jazz/classical mix, lightened by flutes, harps and orchestral arrangements," while Dave Goodwin felt the album had a jazz feel overall, particularly on "The Gardener of Eden." Paul Lester, meanwhile, felt the usage of piano, synths and strings presented a "European melancholy." Smash Hits magazine described the album as combining "dious, mannered 'soul' style music" with tongue-in-cheek indulgent parts and "the odd classic song."Smash Hits June 1988
Composer Erik Satie was an influence on the album, particularly the atmosphere of his compositions. Weller regularly played Satie and Claude Debussy around this time, among other composers. The Beach Boys were also an influence on the album, as was Chick Corea. The band's bassist Camelle Hinds recalls Weller "absorbing composers like Bacharach and Michel Legrand. Dance was on the horizon and Confessions seemed like a semi-conclusion." Reed wrote that, like The Cost of Loving, Confessions "betrayed a debt to contemporary US R&B (from the work of million-selling producers Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis to indie funk like Osiris' 'War on the Bullshit'). But the range of music on offer here, the sense of adventure, set it apart."
While Weller's lyrics on Confessions are socially conscious, as they had been on previous albums, his lyrics on Confessions in particular are considered some of Weller's most vitriolic and vindictive lyrics. Trouser Press felt the album contained Weller's "most dispirited lyrics," feeling his "general disgust at everything in sight is vitriolic and undisguised." The idealism of previous Style Councils was replaced by a pessimism and personal regrets regarding fractured relationships, one-night stands and guilt. Weller recalled of the album's melancholic tone: "It was just a mood. Not the result of any particular event. I'm always trying to write a good song, and if it's just about one experience, that's just fuckin' boring."
Side one (The Piano Paintings) The Piano Paintings is the more atypical side of the album, featuring pieces influenced by classical music and ballads influenced by jazz. Uncut felt this side of the album "features sublime instrumental passages worthy of Satie, Bacharach or French soundtrack composer Francis Lai." The Trouser Press Music Guide called this section a "collection of jazzy songs with fancy vocal arrangements," while Stephen Thomas Erlewine of AllMusic made note of the "jazz-pop fusions" that feature on this side.
The desolate "It's a Very Deep Sea" opens the album, described as "haunting" by one critic. Weller cited sitting down at a piano "and hearing that first chord, and just what it inspires" as what inspired him to write the song: "It sounds like you're just sinking into the depths." Reed described the song as a poignant lullaby that recalls the Beach Boys' unfinished Smile album. Indeed, Weller saw the song as a "modern surf song Brian Wilson would be proud of, although he would have done it differently."