Billy Bragg and The Blokes, England, Half-English

There’s a theory that good economic times breed conservative bubblegum pop and bad times generate the other kind of music, a theory with legs, when you consider the Long Boom’s saccharine soundtrack starring Britney Spears, ’N Sync, the Backstreets, and countless others we begrudge for taking up a whole sentence in the mentioning. Where was Billy Bragg during all this time—our modern-day Woody Guthrie, our English Bob Dylan, our postpunk folknik savior? He sired at least one little Bilbo Braggins, moved out of London to Dorset, and prudently lay low. Who can forget Bragg’s astonishing debut back in 1984, Life’s A Riot With Spy Vs. Spy? More political than any American folkie has ever been, what distinguished Bragg from other British tubthumpers was the fact that his music wailed, and we found ourselves singing all the words a capella in the car. When Nora Guthrie got fresh to him belatedly in the mid-90s, Woody’s daughter and spiritual executor hired him to finish dozens of Guthrie originals that had lyrics but no music. The result was Billy’s celebrated collaboration with Wilco, The Mermaid Avenue disks. That all went so well that Bragg made good his inevitable return—this time fully ensconsed in a five-piece band. Here’s England, Half English, which is a great record not only because it’s a great record, but because it sends us into the closet, digging around behind those old pea coats and suede smoking jackets in search of vinyl, dusting off that filthy turntable to hear secret classics like “Levi’s Stubb’s Tears,” and “St. Swithen’s Day.”