Earlier in the year, I dragged our Bragg's Brewing Up With Billy Bragg and expressed surprise that I didn't already have this album. That's now been remedied with this compilation of Bragg's debut EP Life's A Riot With Spy vs Spy and the aforementioned Brewing Up, picked up from eBay last week. I'm only going to review the first seven tracks, since all of the rest were covered in that previous Bragg review.
So, Life's A Riot With Spy vs Spy - EP or album? If Fall fans endlessly debate Slates (which is 50% longer than this), then even Bragg fans can't argue against it being an EP. But it still sounds good, if a little naïve in its sparsity, just Bragg and guitar, with only second track To Have And Have Not being the political polemic he's famed for, and even in this the politics are less overt than in much of his work. It follows opener The Milkman Of Human Kindness, a softer love song, and precedes Richard a likeable little number, where Bragg keeps in tune most of the way through! Lovers Town Revisited is straightforward, simple and short, and a decent pop song, before the first bona fide Bragg classic, A New England, a great song, much covered. The Man In The Iron Mask is a sad, slow, sinister song, a tale of wasted love and betrayal, before The Busy Girl Buys Beauty, his commentary on modern (1983) fashion. It's still a great listen forty years on, as is the rest of this CD, with the tracks from Brewing Up, and the singles Between The Wars, World Turned Upside Down and Which Side Are You On added for completeness. You can read about Brewing Up from the link at the top of the page.
This compilation of BB's first two albums (or first album and EP) is classic stripped back Bragg and sounds just great to this old lefty!
4* - a nostalgic journey to where Billy Bragg started
Comments