CD Reviews

Billy Bragg

Mr. Love and Justice | Anti-

By JEFF TAMARKIN | May 6, 2008

3.0 Stars

There is no irony in the title of Billy Bragg’s first album in six years. That’s who he’s always been, even if it’s taken him this long to understand that one half of that equation doesn’t exist without the other. Since arriving as a one-man, Clash-inspired firebrand, Bragg has gotten more props for his rallying cries than for his open-hearted examinations of romance. Yet his love songs have endured while many of the broadsides have become yellowed newspaper. Mr. Love & Justice’s more blatantly political songs are few and largely stripped of rhetoric; when Bragg addresses war (“Farm Boy,” “Sing Their Souls Back Home”), it’s not from a fist-thrusting, Bush-bashing platform but from one of empathy with those in harm’s way. And whereas “I Almost Killed You” might have taken an entirely different turn when Bragg was a self-appointed spokesman for socialism, here it’s a declaration of unchecked passion, the title’s words followed by “with my love.” Recorded with his working band the Blokes, the album isn’t without its misfires (the obvious “The Johnny Carcinogenic Show”), but it is Bragg’s most assured statement since hooking up with Wilco a decade ago to give life to lost Woody Guthrie lyrics.

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