Sound Affects

Sound Affects is the only Jam album co-produced by the band themselves, and it holds the only track credited to all three members, Music for the Last Couple. The sleeve imitates the BBC Radiophonic Workshop's Sound Effects records, with pictures including a taxi, a telephone box, a hearse, the phrase From the cradle to the grave, and Dungeness B power station. The back cover carries an excerpt from Shelley's The Masque of Anarchy.

Weller said Revolver was a major influence and called the album a cross between Revolver and Off the Wall. Rick Buckler's drumming drew on Off the Wall as well, and the post-punk bands Wire, Gang of Four and Joy Division are named among its influences. Start! is built on the bass line of Taxman. A Quietus retrospective saw the production as a contrast to the dense, textured Setting Sons, and noted that Polydor wanted Pretty Green as lead single before Weller won the argument. Start! entered at three and reached number one.

The album sold more than 100,000 copies and spent 19 weeks on the UK chart, peaking at number two. In the United States it reached 72 in February 1981. Record Mirror ranked it the best album of 1980. Q put it at number 15 in a 2006 list of the 40 best albums of the 1980s, and Rolling Stone included it in its 2020 list of the 80 greatest albums of 1980, calling it their "finest album". Weller has cited it as his favorite Jam album. A two-CD deluxe edition appeared on 8 November 2010 and reached 63.