So he and his band went into the studio and built up Dines's tracks through playing. Weller, who wasn't planning on making another LP, found himself inspired. Instead of Weller turning up to record his own compositions, co-producer Simon Dines, who worked on 22 Dreams, sent him some musical ideas: 'sound collages, little mood pieces'. Wake Up the Nation is different, because it was made differently. It shows respect, rather than putting out the same shit every year.' 'It's challenging,' he admits,'but there's nothing wrong with challenging your audience. There were a few album playbacks late last year, he confesses, where he could see that, 'by the end, people were a bit like, 'Oh fucking hell, I've got to get some air.' Just in the past two years, as he turned 50, he has brought out two thoroughly surprising LPs: the lengthy, romantic, critically lauded 22 Dreams, which he describes as 'us trying to be as indulgent as we could, really' and now Wake Up the Nation, compact, dense, whirling with off-beat sounds. How strange that he was once blamed for the stultification of indie music, for being boring and predictable and directly responsible for Britpop's tedious successor, Dadrock. 'Going Underground', 'My Ever Changing Moods', 'Wild Wood', 'You Do Something to Me': all great, all completely different. And yet his career has seen him flicker in and out of favour, mostly through his own wilful refusal to dig the same musical furrow. He's a pop music constant, with his undying stylishness, his unfading anger, his never-ending devotion to what he deems 'proper' music, whether soul, rock, house, folk or R'n'B.

Paul weller child