Paul Weller + Erland & the Carnival

Wake Up the Nation, the tenth album released by Paul Weller since the sequential dissolutions of the Jam and the Style Council, is a very different beast than listeners might expect. Though steeped in a love for the dusty soul that remains this artist’s lifeblood, the disc sounds contemporary and thoroughly hip, with Weller singing over a bubbly pastiche of strange sounds: ghostly piano breaks, squirts of horns, shuffling percussion. The ace up his sleeve is producer and cowriter Simon Dine, who lends Wake Up the Nation the air of mystery and grooviness that for years has made his own band, Noonday Underground, a secret treasure. In support, Erland & Co. is the new folk project of Simon Tong, the talented guitarist from the Verve, Blur (after Coxon left) and the Good, the Bad & the Queen.