Was this the Jam’s best album? I’m not sure many fans would say so. But it does contain one of the trio’s most deeply affecting songs, the despairing “Eton Rifles.” Frontman Paul Weller invests the song’s anti-war lyrics with one of his most powerful Mod-informed-by-punk melodies, and the band drives it home with a characteristically sharp and powerful attack. Granted, some of the material on Setting Sons is unworthy to sit alongside that track — the choice to close the program with a cover version of “Heat Wave” is especially puzzling. But the whole thing is still well worth a listen.

A denser sound from the Jam than their previous work, Setting Sons is an incomplete concept album with some of the tracks linked by the theme of childhood friends going off to war. It’s edgy, sharp, melodic mod pop-rock with Weller’s lyrics progressing nicely as he tackles class in the UK in the album’s single hit, the darkly bitter yet somehow anthemic ‘Eton Rifles’. Songs like ‘Private Hell’, ‘Smithers Jones’ and ‘Saturday’s Kids’ were perfectly observed little mod vignettes of everyday life in early 80s Britain.