Billy Bragg - Lullaby for the working class

When a folk artist steps on stage with his guitar,

he might think he's James Taylor or Bob Dylan.

When I step on stage, I still think I'm the Clash

(Billy Bragg to NME, 1984)

In Britain, the 1980s were shaped by various currents of thought, united by a spirit of protest against the free-market policies of the Thatcher era. A large body of opponents to the Conservative government included a number of artists who watched with concern as the "Iron Lady" dismantled the welfare state. Within the world of pop music, Billy Bragg was perhaps the most authoritative musician in the ideological battle against Thatcherism, around which he built his own socialist political vision and action. Besides opposing it through a substantial body of songs and words, the Bard of Barking (the town where he was born and spent his youth) also contributed in various other ways to supporting his political causes. For the clear-eyed analysis, but also for the tenderness mixed with irony in his lyrics, his songs have been compared to the films of Ken Loach or Mike Leigh, and in the collective imagination his "fascist-killing" guitar, played as if he were a "one-man Clash", has often evoked the ghost of Woody Guthrie.

Almost immediately wrapped in a quasi-mystical "Marxist" aura, Big Ol' Nose (as he's been affectionately nicknamed for years, on account of his large nose) was quickly "lumped" by critics into the so-called anti-folk movement, and in the years that followed his travels and concerts in Eastern Bloc countries - including the Soviet Union - before the fall of the Wall, and later in Latin America, earned him the status, not without lingering controversy, of a "propaganda" musician. Even today, his albums carry a recommended price, his concerts, often full of energy, frequently turn into small political rallies, and, as in the past, his detractors are never in short supply. Several commentators and some figures from the English far right have repeatedly accused him of inconsistency between his lifestyle (he lives on a kind of secluded smallholding in quiet Dorset) and his ideals. These are the same people who disapproved of Barking council's decision to name a street after him, or who look askance when they see him taking part in TV debates on immigration and multicultural society.

All of this explosive mix can be fatal to the recognition of an artist's true worth. Indeed, with Bragg this risk exists, and has existed. It's a mistake born of the same short-sightedness that wants to keep him a prisoner of the context that gave him prestige and recognition in the first place - namely, the 1980s ("but can anyone really come out of the '80s alive?"). In reality, Bragg has not only proved capable of writing great political songs (or simply great songs) beyond that decade - his masterpiece Don't Try This At Home is a case in point, as is the superb, underrated EP The Internationale, or his work with Wilco - but he has always been a songwriter of real class, able to tell stories, including his own, with a remarkable intimate streak and a melodic, almost refined style, despite the roughness that has sometimes been unfairly attributed to him. What's truly striking, in fact, is how stereotyped the perception of his catalogue remains, given just how rich, nuanced and varied his body of work actually is, reaching well beyond the sphere of protest folk tradition.

Bragg is a complete musician and, at times, a genuinely refined pop songwriter. And while the "rough-edged political commitment" of this angry working-class soulboy is his hard-earned trademark, other counterpoints delight us too: love stories and intimate portraits of rare beauty that have turned his discography into a precious, ongoing diary, straddling the public and the private.

In 2006, his opera omnia underwent a proper restyling (an ugly but effective word, on which the man himself would probably crack some very British joke...). Two monumental, excellent box sets were released, Volume I and Volume II, whose contents - 15 CDs and 1 DVD - can also be bought separately (except for the two bonus DVDs, From The West Down To The East - which contains the live set from the South Bank Show in March '85 and the precious concert in East Berlin from August '86 - and If You've Got A Guest List, which features the superb 1991 live recording "At The Town & Country Club", both of which are only available with the box set). These are remastered reissues of nearly all his albums (the exceptions being the two Mermaid Avenue records, the Bloke On Bloke outtakes, Reaching The Converted, and the third bonus disc of the Must I Paint A Picture compilation), complete with bonus CDs packed with unreleased tracks, demos, b-sides, alternate takes and live recordings that attempt to bring some order to the complicated Bragg universe of label changes, compilations and EPs.

In this reissue project, aside from the albums mentioned above, almost nothing is missing, even if there are a few small, obvious gaps (for instance the famous cover of the Beatles' "She's Leaving Home"). All the new editions are highly recommended, not only for the care taken in remastering them and for the fact that some of his records had become hard to find, but also for the bonus discs which, while not radically changing how we hear the music, do enrich the material. This broader reappraisal of the artist runs parallel to the publication of his debut as a writer: "The Progressive Patriot", a sort of political and moral confession or, as its subtitle suggests, a search for Belonging. In the book, Bragg expands on ideas already expressed on his album England, Half English - namely, multicultural England and the idea that socialists shouldn't leave the question of patriotism to the right. This wealth of material, besides reawakening public attention to his figure, also offers an opportunity to reflect on his life and his music.

After leaving school without much fuss, Stephen William Bragg, born in December 1957 into a working-class family in Barking, Essex, practised guitar with Wiggy, his next-door neighbour, who would accompany him for nearly his entire career. Contrary to what one might assume, it wasn't punk, nor folk, that shaped Bragg's ear. His teenage listening habits were varied, but he himself admits, with a touch of humour, to a strong influence - extra-musical too - from soul music: "It wasn't just Smokey and the Tops (Four Tops, ed.) who made me a true music lover, they also politicised me. Being a soulboy didn't mean listening to escapist music without also being able to pick up on its voice of equality and freedom."

The term soulboy is used here by Bragg with precision: at the time of his emotional and musical education, from the late Sixties through to the end of the following decade, a person of that kind belonged to a specific group within UK youth culture. It was someone raised on the mainstream music of the great pop-soul singers - the Tamla/Motown and Stax rosters, Curtis Mayfield, the Impressions, the Isley Brothers - all figures who had already left a heavy mark on the mod stereotype, the putative fathers of this new generation. When he states that "Antonio Gramsci is the Smokey Robinson of Marxism", Bragg lets us glimpse an entire world - a parallel universe at the heart and soul of a British youth that had by then run aground on the shoals of rock, young people dreaming of a utopia to be built within pop culture, an arena absorbing different political-cultural currents and disparate yet closely related influences. In this sense, the civil rights movement, Martin Luther King and the choice of socialism became, in Billy Bragg's restless adolescence, the only lens through which to read the history of his own country - a former empire, the original cradle of world capitalism, by then heading towards a multi-ethnic society.

But our man isn't just "bread and Motown" - on the B-side of his early listening habits he stashes away the songwriters: he cites Simon and Garfunkel among his influences and leans toward a folk approach. At the age of 12 or 13, in fact, discouraged by his inability to replicate the refined atmospheres of soul ballads on guitar (only later, in certain mature compositions, would he manage to fuse echoes of black music into his repertoire), he started writing songs in a folk vein. As time went on, the classic English rock bands crept in, bringing sharper, more alluring listening: Small Faces, Rolling Stones, Faces. Then, all of a sudden, punk arrived. And it hit everyone hard.

Thousands of kids formed bands, others picked up their instruments again. England was in ferment, the epicentre of a great stage-enclave where creativity seemed to have returned to the people. London was burning, and the Clash, even more than the Sex Pistols, became the "classic" reference point for any band forming, the manual everyone drew from.

In 1977 Bragg and Wiggy formed their punk/pub rock band, Riff Raff, and did the rounds of London's clubs and venues. They rehearsed on a farm in Northamptonshire and put out a series of singles, among which the curious "I Wanna Be Cosmonauts" stands out. Things, however, didn't go well and the band split up in no time. Frustrated by the failed Riff Raff experience, Bragg joined the British Army in May 1981. Four months later, he realised a military career wasn't the path for him. Back home, with £175 in his pocket, his mother was waiting for him, and above all, so was his music. While working as a shop assistant in a record store, he began writing his own songs, accompanying himself on electric guitar, starting to build what would become his most distinctive and original mode of expression. He wrote in the tradition of the protest song, inspired by the genre's forefathers, Woody Guthrie and Phil Ochs, but also, and above all, by the corrosive influence of the Clash sound. This blend of styles was original, it worked, and it convinced him to carry on despite the hardships of being a nobody.

These were the hard years of paying his dues, spent going it alone in the most varied settings: from small club gigs to busking in parks and on the streets, hat out for spare change. During this same period he managed to produce a demo tape of his first solo recordings, but without much response. Desperate to get noticed, he disguised himself as a TV repairman and talked his way into the office of Peter Jenner, A&R man at Charisma Records, who appreciated the stunt and promised to listen to the material. It was a pivotal encounter for the former Riff Raff frontman. In the indie scene, Pete Jenner enjoyed great prestige: as a manager he had worked with Pink Floyd and the brief solo appearances of Syd Barrett, Marc Bolan, Roy Harper (whom he had also produced), and no less than the band of Joe Strummer and Mick Jones. To this day, Jenner, who penned a moving note for the box set Volume II (the one for Volume I bears the signature of Bragg's inseparable friend Wiggy), is considered the most important figure behind the Bragg phenomenon. He was certainly the one who believed in him the most and helped him carve out a space in the show business world.

In those years, Billy was a complete unknown, but Pete sensed straight away that this young man, with his angry, direct songs, could go far. Charisma, on the verge of bankruptcy, wouldn't give the manager the budget for a contract, but did allow him to have Bragg record an album, which the artist himself would then set about promoting with a string of gigs.

In July 1983 the thunderous EP Life's A Riot With Spy Vs Spy came out on the sub-label Utility: a small, minimalist masterpiece that already contained many of the seeds of Bragg's musical language: just voice and electric guitar, heavy reverb, rhythm that's rough and bare-bones yet precise, a pronounced Essex accent (a bit of a mix between East London Cockney and the accents of the East Anglia region). Seven songs, and by the end of the 23rd minute this near-debutant was already a songwriter to watch. Starting with the blistering opener: "Milkman of Human Kindness", whose booming, overdriven riff serves as his calling card. The jagged, imperfect vocal benefits from being paired with chords that are powerful yet stripped-down, full of immediate appeal. Sometimes the best pop combinations work in just such bizarre ways. The second track is another staple of his songbook: "To Have And To Have Not", which openly takes aim at the Thatcherite system, where the outfit an unemployed man wears to present himself in the job market is still a uniform of class belonging: “Solo perché sei migliore di me/ non vuol dire che io sia pigro/ Solo perché mi vesto così/ non vuol dire che io sia un comunista”.

But it's with another track, "A New England", that Billy Bragg goes straight to the country's heart. The song immediately became his manifesto. “Non voglio cambiare il mondo/ non sto cercando una nuova Inghilterra/ sto solo cercando un’altra ragazza”. It's a song about feelings, but somehow it takes on the shape of a union between love and politics: the two classic faces of the Bragg-ian narrative framework, a taste for irony and the pain of private lives mixed with the themes of protest songs and the voices of the street. A union that's far from easy to pull off, but one that Billy would manage to blend brilliantly for the rest of his career, tempering its inevitably rhetorical effects. "A New England" didn't just make its creator's fortune: it was in fact covered by singer Kirsty MacColl and shot to number one on the charts in 1985 (worth remembering that, ever since the vocalist's untimely death, Bragg always sings the extended version of the song with the extra verse he wrote especially for her back then).

The album, though short, was welcomed as a breath of fresh air on the scene of young songwriters. But that wasn't enough - Bragg knew he had to strike while the iron was hot, and once again showed up unannounced in front of another authority of the pop world. This was BBC DJ John Peel, a far-sighted talent scout, who during a broadcast made an odd request for food. Bragg listened, and duly turned up at the recording studios with iron determination, food and cassette tape in hand. Needless to say, Peel fell in love with the Billy style. Within a few months, the scene shifted: Charisma was swallowed up by Virgin, Jenner was let go and became Bragg's official manager. Andy Macdonald, formerly of Stiff Records' press office, reissued the EP on his own label, Go! Discs.

The second release, Brewing Up With Billy Bragg (1984), his first proper LP, reveals a musician in full bloom. Although his songwriting still moves within registers not too dissimilar from those of the first EP, there are signs of a greater grip. Above all, the production work is on a more professional level: a few overdubs, touches of organ and horns here and there ensure the listener pays renewed attention to the songs. The tracks that really hit home are "It Says Here" (against the disinformation of the establishment press), but there's also room for feeling: "Love Gets Dangerous", "A Lover Sings", the unrequited love of "The Saturday Boy" and the superb, intimate ballad "St. Swithin's Day". The polemicist still makes himself heard with songs inspired by the tragedy of the Falklands War ("Island Of No Returns", "Like Soldiers Do").

By the end of the record, though, you end up a little weary: Bragg risks becoming tiresome because of a stylistic approach that's too one-note. It's a limitation the musician himself would address starting with his next record.

1984 marks the beginning of his political commitment as an artist: from his unconditional public support for the miners' strike comes the heartfelt EP released the following year, Between The Wars, containing a few gems, like the stunning ballad that is the title track, which launches him into the Top 20 and marks his first appearance on Top of The Pops (Ho pagato i sindacati/ quando i tempi si sono fatti più duri/ Ho sperato che il governo aiutasse i lavoratori/ Ma loro hanno portato la prosperità nell’armeria/ Ci stiamo armando per la pace, ragazzi/ In mezzo alle guerre), the cover of Florence Reece's "Which Side Are You On?" and Leon Rosselson's "The World Turned Upside Down".

Billy Bragg's political "baptism" continues the following year when the Red Wedge takes shape, an initiative co-run with Paul Weller of the Style Council and Jerry Dammers of the Specials, and shared with several British artists (standing out among others are the Smiths, Jimmy Sommerville, the sulphurous Matt Johnson's The The, Junior Giscombe and Madness), which during 1986/87 backed the Labour Party and its leader, Neil Kinnock, ahead of the 1987 general election, with an intense "live campaign" across stages throughout the UK. But the Iron Lady also withstood the onslaught of the musicians' collective's propaganda and walked away with yet another electoral victory.

Despite the defeat, the bard of Barking doesn't give up and continues his battles, including the one with Charter 88, a pressure movement aiming for a reform of the British political system. Meanwhile, he keeps the prices of his records and concerts level and refuses to sell his work in apartheid-era Africa.

Musically, though, the turning point comes with Talking With The Taxman About Poetry (1986), the "difficult third album", as the LP's cover wryly jokes. His singing grows more assured, the lyrics and songs flow by with real pleasure, and the compositions that carry them are sharper and more mature. There's the "full" sound of a band featuring one of the most important heroes of English pop: Johnny Marr, straight from the Smiths. From the sparkling ballad "Greetings To The New Brunette" (come fai a stare sdraiata e pensare all’Inghilterra/ quando non sai nemmeno chi c’è nella squadra/ Shirley, la tua politica sessuale/ mi ha messo nei pasticci), to the visceral blues of "Train Train", the majestic horns of "The Marriage", Dylan meeting the Clash on "Ideology" (le richieste della gente/ cadono inascoltate/ i nostri politici sono tutti carrieristi), right up to the masterpiece: "Levi's Stubb Tears", inspired by the soul saga of the legendary Four Tops frontman.

The whole album, whose title comes from a poem by the Russian poet Vladimir Mayakovsky, glows with a lyrical light that reclaims a sense of the past, as in the well-judged vaudeville of "Honey, I'm A Big Boy Now". There's no shortage of appeals to ideals either, in "There Is Power in The Union" and "Help Save The Youth Of America" (Una nazione con i congelatori pieni/ Sta danzando sulle proprie poltrone/ Mentre fuori un’altra nazione/ Sta morendo di fame per strada), which more or less openly echoes "Rudie Can't Fail" as sung by Joe Strummer. The album reaches the Top Ten.

The following year saw the release of Back To Basics, a compilation featuring the first two albums plus the Between The Wars EP. Around the same time, Bragg struck up an unusual collaboration with the Severini brothers' band Gang, joining them on a cover of the Clash's "Junco Partners" for their second album.

In May 1988 he reached his first – and, so far, only – number one: the magnificent remake of the Beatles' "She's Leaving Home", with Cara Tivey on piano, featured on a various-artists tribute album and on the single lifted from it, later reissued only on the compilation Reaching To The Converted (1999).

A few months later came Workers Playtime, the LP produced by the legendary Joe Boyd (Fairport Convention, Nick Drake), which reveals the artist's "private" side, as fierce in matters of the heart as he is on the street. It's a soul-leaning record, lovely and full of pianos and organs, which threw fans off balance, but within the unease it expresses it reaches genuine heights of inspiration, underlining the musician's acute sensitivity. "Workers Playtime" marks a particular moment in Bragg's output, one in which he allows himself room for an almost philosophical reflection. An explanation is suggested by the Gramsci quote printed on the back of the old LP edition (“Quante volte mi sono domandato se legarsi a una massa era possibile quando non si era mai voluto bene a nessuno, neppure ai propri parenti, se era possibile amare una collettività se non si era mai amato profondamente delle singole creature umane. Non avrebbe ciò isterilito e ridotto a un puro fatto intellettuale, a un puro calcolo matematico la mia qualità di rivoluzionario?”. These are thoughts that spark a subtle sense of identification in him with the philosopher and militant of Sardinian origin. As with Antonio Gramsci, falling in love becomes for Billy Bragg a moment of reflection on the political. Love and politics, public and private, are thus experienced not as a dichotomy, but as part of a greater Whole. Su questa scia obliqua, più interiorizzata che espressa, si muovono brani come la ballata “She’s Got A New Spell”, la souleggiante “Must I Paint You A Picture”, apice del suo songwriting e amatissima dall’autore (non a caso scelta come titolo della raccolta più significativa di Bragg, pubblicata 15 anni dopo), l’a cappella “Tender Comrade”, una delle canzoni più commoventi del suo repertorio, “The Short Answer”, che contiene un memorabile attacco lirico (Nel dizionario/ fra Marx e il marzapane/ c’era Mary/ fra il Profondo Mare Blu e il diavolo c’ero io). Da segnalare anche “The Price I Pay”, “Valentine Day Is Over”, ma anche “The Only One”, impreziosita da un delicato arpeggio. Cala il sipario con “Waiting For The Great Leap Forwards”, che ci sbatte in faccia tutte le contraddizioni dell’impegno politico (“The Revolution/ is just a t-shirt away”).

The record would later be paired with Taxman (minus "Train Train") on the compilation Victim of Geography (1993).

Bragg entered the new decade somewhat unexpectedly with the most militant record of his career: The Internationale, on which he reworks various songs from the popular songbooks of different countries, starting with the anthem of the Socialist International, whose lyrics he adapts. Somewhat underrated due to the ideological aura surrounding it, the EP is actually a genuine gem, alternating heavily arranged pieces complete with brass band against purely vocal tracks. The praise could go on forever: from the a cappella tribute to Phil Ochs ("I Dreamed I Saw Phil Ochs Last Night"), to the Latin American flavour of Carlos Mejía Godoy's "Nicaragua Nicaragüita", to "The Marching Song Of The Covert Battalions". But the two true masterpieces that lend the record an air of classic status are the piano ballad "Blake's Jerusalem" and the chilling anti-militarist tableau "My Youngest Son Came Home Today", written by Scottish songwriter Eric Bogle.

The EP's standing was further enhanced by the 2006 reissue (perhaps the best of them all), which includes the agit-prop EP released ahead of the 1988 US presidential election, Help Save The Youth Of America: Live & Dubious, a handful of previously unreleased tracks (among them a standout cover of Ochs's "Joe Hill", which wouldn't sound out of place on Springsteen's "Seeger Sessions", and Woody Guthrie's immortal "This Land Is Your Land"), plus a bonus DVD featuring performances from 1986-88 drawn from concerts in East Berlin, Nicaragua and Lithuania. Among the unreleased tracks, the one weak spot is an off-key cover of Sam Cooke's "A Change Is Gonna Come": the song that, more than any other, shaped the history of the civil rights movement collapses painfully by comparison with the original.

By now regarded as a fully-formed songwriter, Bragg delivered his masterpiece. It's the double vinyl Don't Try This At Home (1991), which propelled him into the songwriting pantheon. Alongside his new backing band, the Red Stars, he's joined by a handful of famous friends: half of R.E.M. (Peter Buck and Michael Stipe, who duets on the country-tinged "You Woke Up My Neighborhood") and, once again, Johnny Marr. The ensemble gels nicely and every song seems to land. From the angry pop-rock of "Accident Waiting To Happen" to the bucolic "Everywhere", an anti-war ballad written by Sid Griffin and Greg Trooper, to the ethereal pop of "Cindy Of Thousands Lives". "North Sea Bubble", "Body Of Water" and the hit single "Sexuality", co-written with Marr, burst with energy from every pore. But it's the slower side of Don't Try... that truly wins you over. Songs like "God's Footballer", "Trust", "Rumours Of War", Fred Neil's "Dolphins", and above all "Tank Park Salute" (a heart-wrenching farewell to his late father) and "Moving The Goalposts" (an impossible soundtrack written by Burt Bacharach for a Mike Leigh film that was never made) form the deep breath of an album that grows on you with every listen. These last two tracks, moving and almost dreamlike, mark one of the high points of Bragg's songwriting.

Among the gems on the bonus disc of the 2006 edition, worth singling out are the superb ballad "The Gulf Between Us" and the B-sides "Party Of God" with Natalie Merchant's 10,000 Maniacs, Todd Rundgren's "Just One Victory", and "Bread & Circus", again recorded with Merchant.

Major label Elektra, with whom Bragg signed a lucrative deal brokered by the bosses at Go! Discs, mounted a promotional campaign, complete with an MTV video, for the artist's latest work, aiming to turn him into a star, but the effort failed to deliver the hoped-for results. Also in 1991, the in-studio live album recorded with John Peel was released: The Peel Sessions, a preview of which had already surfaced a few years earlier.

Five years passed, Bragg started a family, and with his new record, William Bloke, he laid bare his new self. Which, in essence, can be summed up as: less idealism, more practicality. He surprises listeners with his irony when, in a reworked version of his old warhorse "A New England", he sings: I'm just looking for another girl/ to babysit the kid. Meanwhile he'd moved to Dorset, where, in the 2001 election (www.votedorset.net), he would organise genuine, systematic campaigns to shift the vote across the region. The record is generally seen as a weak link in his discography, but it's actually a well-made, enjoyable work. "From Red To Blue" is a decent ballad, while "Upfield", in which our man tells us he's found "socialism of the heart", is downright exhilarating and joyful. "Everybody Loves You Babe" is fun and polished. Among the most successful tracks here, on a par with those on Don't Try, is "Brickbat". "The Space Race Is Over" and "The Fourteenth February" also hold up well, while "Goalhanger" is an unexpected, slightly lightweight "almost-ska" number. "Sugardaddy" brings a relaxed feel you wouldn't expect from one of his records. The rest? Solid but unremarkable.

Fans tend to prefer the subsequent collection of outtakes from the same period, titled — in a nod to Dylan's "Blonde On Blonde" — Bloke On Bloke, which also celebrates the defeat of the Tories and the rise of Tony Blair. Standing a cut above the rest are "The Boy Done Good" and the irish-folk-flavoured j'accuse "Thatcherites".

Between 1998 and 2000, Mermaid Avenue was released in two parts, a project interpreting original lyrics made available for setting to music by Woody Guthrie's daughter Nora, which Billy, together with Jeff Tweedy's Wilco, brings to life with fresh musical ideas. The two albums, broadly on a par in terms of quality, achieved solid commercial success. Even though some argue that Billy's presence comes across as less striking than Wilco's, for the English songwriter it stands as a reaffirmation.

In reality, the outcome is split evenly down the middle. Each party plays its part in an unusual work, one capable of speaking to new generations and longtime fans alike, despite an inspiration and musical sensibility far removed from those of the popular folksinger. Friend Natalie Merchant also makes a lovely appearance.

Fresh off the success of Mermaid Avenue, which earned Grammy Award nominations, Bragg returned with the Blokes, his new backing band, whose ranks also included Ian McLagan, the legendary Small Faces keyboardist — a cult band revered by the British songwriter.

2002 saw the release of his most recent work to date, this time credited jointly to The Blokes as well. It's England, Half English, an album that attempts to capture the new social fabric of an increasingly unrecognisable England, caught between the pressures of globalisation and denied rights. The music owes a great deal to the band's input, though it doesn't always seem fully aligned with the singer's own inspiration. Certain genre excursions (the pastiche of the title track, or the reggae of "Dreadbelly") simply don't seem to fit Billy's mindset, and on "Take Down The Union Jack" he dusts off his guitar to play things "his way". "Some Days I See The Point" feels unfinished, while "NPWA" is an odd, driving track that could almost have come from the recent work of Paul Weller.

Having reached the milestone of his fiftieth year, with a substantial discography behind him, Bragg puts himself back in play with Mr. Love & Justice (2008), an album that, however, doesn't add much to what he'd already said in the past.

The opening is promising: the ballad "I Keep Faith", with the minimal but crucial contribution of guest Robert Wyatt, "I Almost Killed You", driven by handclaps and accordion, and "M For Me", with its gentle horns and piano, are songs built on craft but also on passion and genuine feeling.

Enjoyable without being exceptional are also the anti-folk gallop of "The Beaches Are Free", the choral soul of "Sings Their Souls Back Home", the bluesy "Farm Boy" and the sad, resigned lament of "O'Freedom", but the rest of the album fades into a rather evident blandness, and even on tracks dealing with hot-button topics like smoking ("The Johnny Carcinogenic Show") Bragg fails to summon the old verve.

With his most recent albums, Bragg's songwriting has lost some depth and musical credibility, but in terms of ideas it's more relevant than ever, still speaking a sharp, ironic language capable of stirring emotions, thoughts and criticism of some of the ills of our age.

2013 gives us a meditative, unusual, yankee Bragg. A "Sherpa of Heartbreak", as he himself put it. Attentive to emotional fractures and relationship troubles. Over the previous couple of years the Progressive Patriot had granted unlimited leave to his trusty Blokes, with whom he'd seemed to lose his edge. He went back to shuttling solo from one small club to the next, crowning the impromptu Pressure Drop project with his old dream of song-theatre: part rally, part comedy, part art installation and concert, with few changes from those rapid-fire bursts of anecdote and irony that make up his dazzling live shows. He then flew to Pasadena to record this Tooth & Nail (2013), his album as a seasoned standard-bearer of Americana.

The choice of Joe Henry as producer and co-writer spells out the new coordinates better than any press release ever could, while the pedal steel licks courtesy of Greg Leisz or the elegant Delta imprint of "Handyman Blues" act like highlighter strokes underlining the point. Behind the bristly exterior shown off in the promo photos looms a furrowed, à-la Johnny Cash gaze, hiding a smile. It might be the grand confidence with which he embraces a blatantly classicist brand of songwriting, yielding results that are happy if nothing else, or the pauperist storyteller's attitude of "January Song", all substance and disillusionment.

Suddenly the fire of youth feels very, very far away. Bragg is no longer the mouthpiece of social unease. Today's shadows belong exclusively to his own spirit, but they don't overwhelm him. With measured wisdom, this new Billy at times recalls his namesake, the Oldham-born Prince, even optimistic if seen in the right light. The conviction is that the days ahead will be better regardless, and that any reckonings will remain exceptions without lasting consequences. Like the electric sounds on this record, rare and never overdone, perfect for accompanying a voice that has aged but is still magnificently evocative. Beneath the veil of melancholy, there's no trace of self-satisfaction — if anything, one last cryptic message tinged with pride: "I still carry the enthusiasm of someone who falls in love with everything." Now that the Iron Lady has officially entered the album of memories, it should come even easier to him.

After recording Shine A Light: Field Recordings From The Great American Railroad in American train stations in 2016, and the 2017 mini-LP "Bridges Not Walls", in 2021 Billy Bragg returns to singing about London and his own country, an England grappling with the bitter reality of Brexit and the pandemic.

On The Million Things That Never Happened (2021), an album out of step with current trends, the artist, as usual, lays himself bare, showing his take on current affairs but also his doubts and vulnerabilities. The pandemic sits at the heart of the narrative, with its hardships described in the title track, feelings of loneliness, depression, and also the role of the internet during lockdown: useful as a tool for communication and information, but also "heroin for the self-taught", as it's described in "Ten Mysterious Photos That Can't Be Explained".

Musically, we're on familiar ground: plenty of midtempo ballads making generous use of moog, mellotron and dobro guitars, which, thanks to the delicate production touch of Dave Izumi and Romeo Stodart, combined with Bragg's ever more refined voice, give the whole record a warm, enveloping feel. There are a few nods to recent-past country ("Freedom Doesn't Come For Free"), some songs with piano underscoring the more pained passages ("Lonesome Ocean", "I Will Be Your Shield"), strings for the most poignant moments ("The Million Things That Never Happened"), but there's also banjo, violin and pub-style backing vocals ("Freedom Doesn't Come For Free") and restorative acoustic moments for bucolic, Nick Drake-like suspensions ("Reflections On The Mirth Of Creativity").

"I Will Be Your Shield", the touching "The Million Things That Never Happened", about the deprivations we've had to accept during the pandemic, and the sprightly "Ten Mysterious Photos That Can't Be Explained", written together with his son Jack Valero, can rightfully put themselves forward as future classics in Billy Bragg's already rich catalogue.

Contributions by Lorenzo Montefreddo ("The Million Things That Never Happened")

Notes

The translation of the Gramsci quote is by Francesco Scalambrino, author of "Un uomo sotto la mole". Biografia di Antonio Gramsci, Editrice Il Punto, Turin, 1998.

Some transcriptions of lines from Billy Bragg's songs are taken from Salvatore Patti's work on the artist published on musicboom.it

Ride the wave of great music

Add OndaRock to your favorite sources on Google Discover. Don't miss our reviews, milestones and latest news straight in your feed.

Follow on Google