Billy Bragg and Wilco - Mermaid Avenue

Genre: Modern Folk, Old School Folk

Where would I have heard of them: Well a few entries back I jizzed all over your computer talking about Billy Bragg, and a few years back the indie scene couldn't shut up about Wilco. They are one of the bands various people were addicted to in 2004. I should also include Woody Guthrie here because these are his lyrics, the music and arrangement are by the other two. Woody Guthrie wrote all the crypto-socialist nursery rhymes you learned in elementary school, like "This Land is Your Land." Woody Guthrie was born in Oklahoma, and was one of the tens of thousands of people who emigrated to California as a result of the Dust Bowl. When he saw the atrotious way the police in California treated the poor, we began a career writing protest music and singing folk songs that became widely successful due to the rise of the radio as a form of mass communication. He also happened to be on hand in New York City in time to participate in the burgeoning folk scene there that began in the 40s and burst into national relevance in the 60s. The songs contained in this disc were written by Woody Guthrie but never clearly set to music. His widow approached Billy Bragg after his death, and Bragg approached Wilco to help him do justice to the material, because of their capacity as a full band, because they were fellow modern folk artists with proven recording experience, and because they were talented musicians who would bring increasing levels of fame to the project that would help ensure a decent return on the investment.

Anything of note: I held off on getting this for a long time. I was not immediately enamored of Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, the Wilco album everyone went Beatles Fangirl over. The second Billy Bragg album I purchased was Internationale, an album he made singing well known protest songs, and it is alright. Honestly the latter fact made me a bit hesitant about Billy Bragg for a while. After finding that most of Bragg's other material was solid gold, including the recent Tooth and Nail, I figured I needed to give Bragg a chance with this one. After all, I also respect Guthrie, so it couldn't be terrible.

Is it any good: It is, in fact, not terrible. To the contrary, it is excellent. The three artistic poles here meld spectacularly to form a really excellent whole, though Billy Bragg clearly shines through maybe more than anyone else. Which is fine by me. Billy Bragg is the balls.

As we are accustomed to hearing from Bragg, there is a really confident mixture of humor and earnestness here. The fact that these are Guthrie's lyrics makes this rather special. One sometimes has to stop and remember that Guthrie had a sense of humor as scintillating as Bragg's, and the fact that these are the songs he left unrecorded because they were not important enough compared with his political music may help explain how well the two men's styles were able to meld so well, beyond the grave as it were. The fact that there are apparently several thousand of these songs, and Bragg and Wilco were free to hand pick the ones that got recorded, can't have hurt.

That said, I think Bragg and Wilco do a great job painting a picture of Guthrie as a whole person with their song selections. There are the requisite political songs (Unwelcome Guest), but the vast majority are personal and even romantic. I think Walt Whitman's Niece is a great way to start the album for this reason. It is more a humorous diary entry about a flirty, bohemian night spent with a friend and a woman reading poetry out of sight of the causes they may have championed. The fact that the song's structure is avowedly adrift from the standard rock song structure is a bonus, as is the way that the structure is consciously played for laughs. I think the first time I heard Wilco's background vocals, especially at the end of the first, uh, verse I guess you could call it, I had to pull over because I was laughing so hard.

This is an important point. I think it is easy to lose Wilco in this album. Much of this album is definitely an interplay between Bragg as vocalist and producer, and Guthrie, as respected artist and man. Wilco's Jeff Tweedy gets a few songs but mostly this is the Bragg Show from a vocal perspective. But Wilco's musical contributions shouldn't be ignored. Not that Bragg is a slouch musically, but there is definitely a note of Americana in the folk on tap here that speaks more of Wilco than Bragg, and is completely necessary in this context since, you know, this is Guthrie, the Oklahoma Cowboy we are memorializing here. More broadly, i think their wide open style plays well with Bragg's more intimate one. The result is an album full of songs that contain both broad scope and a rewarding richness.

Unfortunately Wilco seem to have also felt that this was a bit too much The Bragg Show and, though there is a Mermaid Ave II, these two artistic poles ended up parting ways before that album was fully in the bag, and Bragg finished it up himself. Which is fine, I plan on buying it. Just a good thing to be aware of here.

Anyway, this is a great album. go buy it. It is very rewarding.