REVIEW: Billy Bragg and Wilco, Mermaid Avenue Volume 2 (Elektra)
- Don Share
This album is so good that I'm almost sorry it's being marketed as a Volume 2! Please, please do not think, "I've got the first one, maybe that's enough," or "Maybe this one's just there to capitalize on the first." Let me reassure you about the sequel to Billy Bragg and Wilco's highly-acclaimed reconstruction of music for Woody Guthrie's lyrics, Mermaid Avenue. For one thing, given how many of Guthrie's lyrics were never set to music, let alone given much public exposure, two albums, maybe even a half-dozen albums (in an age when there are enormous box sets of Hank Williams, Harry Smith recording, and even permutations of the Stooges' Fun House) couldn't be enough. But beyond that, Bragg and Wilco are artists with enough integrity and vitality that they are not interested in repeating themselves. Even given that this album's origins are in the overflow from sessions for the first effort, it's not a matter of its being better or worse than what came before: it's different, and it's essential.
Bragg and Wilco really channeled Woody Guthrie the first time around: it was darn spooky how they came up with precisely the right music for lyrics Guthrie never himself sang. But even more ingeniously, they follow their own instincts here. In giving up trying to sound so much like Guthrie, they've managed to concoct music that sounds like nothing else.
Wilco's Jeff Tweedy and Jay Bennett have put a new twist on their own sound and on Guthrie, and even on the whole Americana-genre, with such expansive music as "Remember the Mountain Bed," which is exquisitely moving, and "Meanest Man," which is hair-raisingly passionate. Tweedy and Bennett are as unsettling as Tom Waits yet as folksy as The Byrds on tracks like "Blood of the Lamb" and "Secret of the Sun." And Billy Bragg is more marvelous, more purely admirable than ever on this album. He takes Guthrie's oddball side, in "My Flying Saucer, and comes up with something that is warm and delightful, yet far from silly; he turns the grisly tale told in "Hot Rod Hotel" into something so scary Nick Cave'd be jealous; and yet he concocts perfect wee-hoo hoedown music for "Joe Dimaggio Done It Again."
Guthrie's lyrics never take a back-seat, either. The Joycean flow of "Feed of Man" ("brushyfruits and flower petalls [sic]") remains intact, as does the in-your-face politics of the stomping "All You Fascists." It's appropriate that these superb artists have dedicated themselves to bringing to our ears Guthrie lyrics that might never have gotten an audience otherwise: selflessness is, after all, inherent in both Guthrie's politics and lyrics. How delightful, then, to hear guests like Natalie Merchant, who has never sung prettier than on Bragg's sweet setting for "I Was Born," or Corey Harris, with a perfectly judged vocal on "Against the Law." "I can't be this bad because my folks are too good," Guthrie wrote, never knowing what good folks he'd have on these recordings.
But best is last: Billy Bragg's wrenching music and vocal for "Black Wind Blowing," and Tweedy's absolute stunner, "Someday, Some Morning, Sometime." Far more than a mere tribute to Guthrie, Mermaid Avenue, Volume 2 is sublime music in its own right. Not just for Guthrie's fans, then, or Wilco's, or Billy Bragg's, this is an album - Guthrie would surely approve - for everyone.
