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William Bloke
09/10/1996 3:00 AM, Yahoo! Music
Sandy Masuo
Though veteran pop politico
Billy Bragg draws on the same time-honored artist-as-activist tradition as
Phil Ochs,
Woody Guthrie and
Bob Dylan, he's spent the last 15 years putting his own cockney-accented British pop twist on it. And what's most remarkable is that the socio-political vignettes inspired by his socialist muse continue to have so much heart and soul. For every acute political statement on William Bloke--"Northern Industrial Town" for example is basically a two-and-a-half minute set up for Bragg's point about England's control of Northern Ireland--there's an emotional insight that makes an equal impact. The metaphoric image of lovers walking down the aisle together in a supermarket (perhaps the same one that
Mick Jones wandered all those years ago), filling their basket together in "Brickbat" transforms a mundane errand into an act of poetic grace, and lines like "he was trapped in a haircut he no longer believed in" (from "King James Version") have a literary sass that's reminiscent of
Pete Townshend. Though he's mostly associated with folksy, singer-songwriter stylings, Bragg is actually a more diverse writer than that; "Everybody Loves You Babe" would sound perfectly natural on a
Frank Sinatra album, and the tempered R&B groove and exuberant horn blasts of "Upfield" make the lyrics which speak of a "socialism of the heart" soar with so much spirit and joy that it comes off more like a Jam-inflected Marxist hymn than a political pop tune. Sometimes a whisper will draw more attention than a scream, and it's the subtle vulnerabilities peeking through the politics that bring Bragg's messages home.
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