Various: Fire & Skill - The Songs of The Jam

(Ignition)

**

Review: Russell Baillie

Tribute album to the Jam where the more unlikely fans - that is, the American contingent - have a better time of reworking songs from the early, best chapters of Paul Weller's very English songbook.

The likes of Buffalo Tom's Going Underground, Garbage's The Butterfly Collector, Ben Harper's The Modern World, and the Beastie Boys' Start! all show a make-it-our-own vitality sadly absent from the reverent Brit squad. Among them are the Gallagher Brothers (Liam with Ocean Colour Scene's Steve Craddock doing Carnation, Noel on To Be Someone) and Reef on a particularly hamfisted That's Entertainment which it simply isn't.