Mr. Love & Justice

Amazon.co.uk
You'll be hard pressed to find good reason to call Billy Bragg a singer. He was never one back in the day and you can't go teaching old socialists new tricks. His spirited holler was carried through in his heyday by sheer bravado and the fact that his poetic punk monologues had to find their way to your ears somehow. But why, over recent years--and especially on Mr Love and Justice--has he increasingly indulged himself with shameless attempts on melody, you might ask. There's no easy answer, other than the inevitable mellowing of age and indeed battered vocal chords. But as he also drifts away from the fiery Clash and Costello inspirations of his younger self and expands more singularly on his love for the likes of Woody Guthrie and Wilco (with whom he collaborated on interpretations of Guthrie's unfinished songs), his work has developed a real warmth and comfort that it's hard not to be strangely touched by. His backing band, The Blokes, gel spiritedly throug