Billy Bragg "Tooth & Nail"

I've always been a fan of Billy Bragg's shtick. Those early 80's solo shows introduced us to his uniquely unselfconscious abrasive electric guitar style and his ever-so-clever lyricism - sometimes poignant, sometimes funny, often political and always incisive.
Anyone who can get away with rhyming "unrequited" and "a party to which I was never invited" is in my book a great lyricist. His poetic genius has been confirmed many times over the years - not least on 1988's "Workers Playtime" when he sang of his girlfriend telling him
"No amount of poetry would mend this broken heart,  but you can put the Hoover round if you want to make a start".

So Bragg has set a very high bar for himself. Maybe that's why it's been five years between drinks - 2008's "Mr Love & Justice" was a somewhat patchy affair with some real gems and some that didn't meet the high expectations he has created. With the release of "Tooth and Nail" it is apparent that here is a man in his mid-fifties who is absolutely at the top of his game. He's taken control of the means of production and using the internet to communicate with and sell directly to his loyal and extensive audience. He's taken off to the Californian sun and recorded a bunch of great songs with top producer Joe Henry and a bunch of very talented, mainly accoustic musicians. Greg Leisz's pedal steel guitar gives the project a genuine bluegrass feel that suits Bragg's present persona perfectly.

He revisits the Woody Guthrie songbook for "I Ain't Got No Home", a biting and highly relevant critique of the plight of the dispossessed worker in the depression. He penned "There Will Be A Reckoning" to express his disgust at the Neo-Nazi merchants of hate who tried to run for political office in his home town of Barking, Essex. He tries to sum up his own socialist beliefs by borrowing from the Bible in "Do Unto Others". "Noone Knows Nothing Anymore" tries to make sense of the "atoms spinning round and round deep down in the underground" and ends with "one head being banged against a wall".

He bemoans the fact that he can't be the handyman his partner wants him to be: "Don't be expecting me to put up shelves or build a garden shed, but I can write a song that tells the world how much I love you instead" is a line which must surely have won him brownie points with Juliet. But it's his wrestling with, and trying to get to grips with, the emotions that come with the ups and downs of a long-term relationship that are the most compelling songs - "January Song", "Swallow My Pride", "Your Name On My Tongue" and "Chasing Rainbows" all draw the listener back for more plays to peel back the layers of meaning. It's great to see and hear Billy in such fine form. He could even be talking to an Australian election year populace when, in the CD's closer, he sings "To the misanthropic, misbegotten merchants of gloom....Tomorrow's Going To Be A Better Day, we're going to make it that way"