BILLY BRAGG: TOOTH & NAIL (2013)
1) January Song; 2) No One
Knows Nothing Anymore; 3) Handyman Blues; 4) I Ain't Got No Home; 5) Swallow My
Pride; 6) Do Unto Others; 7) Over You; 8) Goodbye, Goodbye; 9) There Will Be A
Reckoning; 10) Chasing Rainbows; 11) Your Name On My Tongue; 12) Tomorrow's
Going To Be A Better Day.
Billy's latest release so far has been, if
possible, even more humble and
low-key than Mr. Love & Justice.
This time, he is largely acoustic, with a minimal backing band, and all the
songs are shushy — quiet, reserved, introspective, even introvert. Yet it all
sounds so completely natural that you almost begin to wonder if this is not the
real Billy Bragg, and all these years
of electrobusking and political activism were merely an attempt to cure himself
of a natural shyness; and now it's all coming back to him.
Or maybe it is simply that Woody Guthrie
experience — you begin as an idealistic activist, but eventually you just get
tired, say «fuck it», and become a whisperer rather than a shouter. Not that Tooth & Nail is, by any means, a
cynical or a mean record: Billy is still willing to spread the good vibe, not
the bitter vibe, as the song titles clearly show (ʽDo Unto Othersʼ, ʽTomorrow's
Going To Be A Better Dayʼ). It is just... quiet. No grand rallying statements,
just good old timey music from the living room, where you use the medium for a
quickie cheer-up. Or cheer-down, because the songs here aren't exactly
«cheerful». But they're not all that sad, either.
It is all about the vibe, and the vibe is very
cool. Billy's voice has finally matured to the point of providing us with a
real personality — this homey, cozy Brit guy who's worried about all the
problems in the world, yet is really just a quiet family man in the depths of
his heart. A song like ʽHandyman Bluesʼ, where he admits that "the
screwdriver business just gets me confused / It takes me half an hour to change
a fuse / I'm not your handyman!", goes all the way straight to my own heart, and so do most of the
others as well. The melodies are nothing to remember — your regular old folk
and country chord changes, with simple, tasteful, unadorned acoustic guitars,
pedal steel, and piano to carry them out — but when taken together with the
personality, they become charming and endearing.
Sometimes he seems to be pushing it: ʽGoodbye,
Goodbyeʼ could easily be taken for a song of resignation, of closing the door
on his rowdy past — which is probably not quite
what is meant, seeing as how Billy did not exactly become a recluse in 2013 or
anything. On the other hand, ʽTomorrow's Going To Be A Better Dayʼ concludes
the album with a generally optimistic statement, telling you not to
"become demoralized by this chorus of complaint" — even if the song
itself is so quiet and shaky that it seems as if the man himself were having
trouble believing in his own words. Oh well, I guess that if a musically
generic, but atmospherically charismatic record presents itself as a bundle of
contradictions, it's all for the better.
The album's «biggest» song is arguably ʽNo One
Knows Anything Anymoreʼ, played out a bit louder than everything else (at
least, the drums are loud enough) and laying out Billy's general perception of
things: "No one knows anything anymore / Nobody really knows the score /
Since nobody knows anything / Let's break it down and start again", he
suggests to a leisurely tempo and lazy country-rock backing. If this is a
denial of progress, you know, he just might have something there — at least,
this is consistent with the album's general message: stop the crazy rush,
relax, take the time to take it slow and easy (and who knows, maybe you'll also
kill a little less people that way). I'm all for progress, but I'm also partial
to this vibe, and so, even if the songs here are musically generic, I'm giving
the record a thumbs
up for all it's worth.
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