BILLY BRAGG
Mr. Love & Justice

In 2002, Billy Bragg finally gave his Wilco-loving American audience a reason to stop thinking about Woody Guthrie’s songbook. A scant six years later, Bragg reneges on the promise of England, Half English by keeping himself maddeningly consistent with his back catalog’s inconsistency. The desperately earnest troubadour is at his best on Mr. Love & Justice when his sincerity is cut with his considerable lyrical wit, as on “I Almost Killed You” and “The Johnny Carcinogenic Show.” Bragg also takes the full-band attack of England, Half English and washes it in the adult-contemporary rinse cycle on songs such as “I Keep Faith,” “The Beach Is Free” and the Band-influenced “Sing Their Souls Back Home.” He delivers with “Something Happened,” which relies more on punk-inspired guitars and caterwauling, distorted harmonica than it does on Bragg’s lyrical dissertation on the difference between love and lust. Two final, hopeful rays of sunshine streak through the tail end of the album: “O Freedom” and “Farm Boy,” which both start off with the characteristically weird percussive style of labelmate Tom Waits. Overall, though, Mr. Love & Justice is a collection of broken promises and lyrics that don’t live up to their potential. Bragg sings “Take the M for me and the Y for you out of family and it all falls through” without ever mentioning that it spells “fail,” instead leaving the listener to decide whether the omission was intentional, a mistake or an epitaph. [Anti-, www.anti.com]

—Pat Hipp