Billy Bragg
GO! DISCS 1986
A-side: ‘Greetings To The New Brunette’
Big nosed bard of Barking at his most sensitive.
Billy Bragg’s live shows have often shown his delicate way with a Woody Guthrie ballad. His thoughtful take on ‘I Ain’t Got No Home’ is right up there with the more expansive portrait he painted of Guthrie alongside Wilco on 1998’s Mermaid Avenue, as they essayed their way through his unpublished archive with skittering grace. One of four covers backing the A-side’s Johnny Marr and Kirsty MacColl-enhanced summery tale of new love (freighted with murmured fears of commitment), Bragg turned to regular touring partner and English alternative country authority Hank Wangford (a medical doctor who started treading the boards after meeting Gram Parsons) for this intimate duet. Their take on Guthrie’s protest song about the racist media portrayal of victims of 1948’s Los Gatos plane crash found Bragg putting his estuary drawl to one side, delicately harmonising with Wangford over the gentle strum of a low acoustic guitar and a higher-pitched mandolin. Clearly heartfelt, it’s pointed lines about illegal workers and death in the service of capitalism seem ever more resonant in a post-Brexit landscape punctuated by the mad racist warbling of Suella Braverman and co.