The Jam “In the City” (1977)<i> Polydor</i>

“In the City” is one of those great rock albums that only could have been made by a band with plenty of youthful moxie. The first (and still most raucous) recorded salvo by the Jam is an absolutely galvanic celebration of British teen rebellion.

Mod revivalists, the London trio eschewed punk’s safety pin and tattered T-shirt look in favor of neatly tailored suits and ties. But despite the band’s more polished appearance, the youth-oriented songs on “In the City” share the same incendiary qualities found in the music of such punk contemporaries as the Sex Pistols (who, indeed, stole the bass run from this album’s stellar title track for their own barn-burning “Holidays In the Sun”). “In the City” is basically the vision of Paul Weller, an uncommonly talented singer-songwriter-guitarist who, then 19, was singing and playing with an almost throat-throttling conviction and energy.

From the manic “Art School” to the soulful but rowdy “Non-Stop Dancing,” the album bursts with the glorious sounds of careening guitars, meaty bass lines and rapid-fire drum shots. The upstart Jam often was compared to the early Who, and one only has to listen to this disc’s surging “Sounds From the Street” to hear the connection.