Tonight is the final ‘redraft’ in
my football pool, so I’m squeezing in a review before everyone arrives to drop
all the useless and injured players on their roster and pick over whoever’s left.
For some, this is a chance to slightly
adjust their well-tuned football machine for the final lap. For others it’s
more akin to pumping four more dollars of gas into the tank of your old beater
and hoping it’s enough to get it home in one piece. This year, I’m in the
latter category. So it goes…
Disc 804 is….England, Half English
Artist: Billy
Bragg and the Blokes
Year of Release: 2002
What’s up with the Cover? It is half an English flag. Get
it?
How I Came To Know It: I only bought this album in the
last year as I drilled through a half dozen Billy Bragg albums I didn’t have and
determined which of them I wanted. “England Half English” made the list,
obviously.
How It Stacks Up: I have eight Billy Bragg albums, with plans to
get a ninth and then call it a day. I like them all, but sadly must put
“England, Half English” down near the bottom. I’ll say 7th or 8th
best pending my review of “Worker’s Playtime.”
Ratings: 3 stars
With all the mistrust and fear in the world in the
aftermath of the Paris bombings, it was fitting that I rolled a Billy Bragg
album that is all about embracing our differences and living together.
“England, Half English” is Bragg’s love song to
immigration and multiculturalism, and his reminder that England itself is a
nation founded largely by people who came from somewhere else (Angles and
Saxons foremost among them).
This record reminds us that not only can we live
together and celebrate our differences, we do it every day without even
noticing. The title track, sung with a heavy English accent has the main
character drinking a cappuccino, while alternating between meals of veggie
curry and bubble and squeak. As he later points out:
“Britannia, she’s half English,
she speaks Latin at home
St. George was born in the
Lebanon, how he got here I don’t know
And those three lions on your
shirt
They never sprang from England’s
dirt
Them lions are half English, and
I’m half English too.”
The working class brogue helps the song point out
that this recognition of England’s many different traditions is just common
sense. The song also tries to pull together different music traditions to
underscore the point, but unfortunately I found the efforts to transition
between styles a bit less successful than the transition between foods.
This is the biggest detraction to the record, which
has Bragg gamely trying to mix in different musical styles from England, the
Middle East and South Asia. Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t, and
when it doesn’t it is really noticeable. In particular, “Baby Farroukh” is an unlistenable jingle to begin with and efforts
to change it up halfway through just make it worse.
Better in terms of making his point is the more
traditionally arranged “Distant Shore”
which captures the isolation and sadness of refugees fleeing repressive regimes
that does the best it can in helping you feel what it would be like to walk in
those shoes.
Bragg finds time to get in a few folk protest songs
as is his want, and here he decides to take aim at the United Kingdom. I rather
like the UK, Billy, but that doesn’t mean I can’t enjoy a rollicking good
protest song. “Take Down the Union Jack”
is as catchy as it is nasty, as Bragg runs through all the problems he has with
his own country. The album’s themes come back to the fore in the final verse:
“Take down the Union Jack, it
clashes with the sunset
And pile up all those history
books, but don’t throw them away
They just might have some clues
about what it really means
To be an Anglo hyphen Saxon in
England.co.uk.”
There’s those Angles and Saxons again, with the
emphasized hyphen to remind you that those two groups were also distinct and
distrustful of one another but got over it.
When he decides to take a break from the bigger
themes on “England, Half English” Bragg shows he can still write love songs that
are both pretty and clever. “Jane Allen”
is a song about being tempted by an old flame but going home to your true love.
“Another Kind of Judy” is a strangely
upbeat song about a relationship that didn’t work out but left a lot of
pleasant memories. Bragg explores the darker side of love with “He’ll Go Down” a warning to a woman to
not let a good for nothing bastard drag her down with him.
The album has some unfortunate production decisions,
most notably the failed effort at Caribbean rhythms on “Dreadbelly” and the aforementioned “Baby Farroukh” but for the most part “England, Half English” is a
good folk record with an important message of tolerance and acceptance.
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