Paul Weller
Wake Up the Nation

THE REVIEW

"It's challenging,but there's nothing wrong with challenging your audience. It shows respect, rather than putting out the same shit every year."

So says the Modfather Paul, regarding Wake Up the Nation, a quintessentially British rock album of the second decade of the new millennium...a rock infused with pulsating black music, more Blur than Jam, but especially muscular, direct, rattling, visceral ("Find The Torch, Burn The Plans" sung by the stadium crowd), packed with turbo-pianos, Rhythm & Blues, soothing openings, and powerful bass lines (think of the towering Glen Matlock live on the Iguana's Soldier tour).

Only 4 out of 16 tracks exceed three minutes in length, and at first listen, you feel literally tossed about: Our Man is a still-angry and fit fifty-year-old: there's no time to settle into the mood of one track before the soundscape changes; here, it is advised to let yourself be carried away in the dizzying experience. A sense of the temporary, of being torn away, of wild but elegant pervades, with Paul Weller seized by an expressive urgency, not always clear but well articulated: from "Moonshine", the opening track (a punch of Bryan Ferry's "Let's Stick Together" which was Wilbert Harrison's "Let's Work Together"), he moves to the title track, a descendant of Quadrophenia, and then quickly transitions into the Motown world with "No Tears No Cry".

My favorite sequence (with hints of delightful resemblance in the vintage recovery to Divine Comedy) is composed of "In Amsterdam", "She Speaks", the aforementioned anthem "Find The Torch, Burn The Plans", and "Aim High" which could be assigned to Marvin Gaye or Curtis Mayfield. "Andromeda" will please the widows of early seventies Bowie, although the entire album echoes, with altered underwear, the electric intensity of David's Live at BBC 2000. The grand finale is marked by bursts of guitars, electronic sizzles, and choral singing around the pub tables, before Paul's sermon: "social networking sites are bullshit", thus we're all served.

Concerning the album's contents, I quote the author himself: "The lyrics are about the state of our nation and how we feel about it, so the awakening is primarily a stream of consciousness", except for "Trees", a cenotaph in multiple parts dedicated to his late father, not exactly indispensable. Guests include Kevin Shields, guitarist from My Bloody Valentine, on the compressed "7 & 3 Is The Striker’s Name", and Jam's bassist Bruce Foxton on "Fast Car, Slow Traffic" 1'58” of pure extravagance. Guaranteed to make you feel twenty years younger, at least for us youngsters.