Billy Bragg launched his career as a recording artist in 1983 with Life's a Riot with Spy vs. Spy, a seven-song EP that somehow sounded modest and wildly ambitious at the same time. Recorded fast, rough, and cheap (and often sounding like it), Life's a Riot presented Bragg as an unlikely cross between Woody Guthrie and Joe Strummer -- one guy with a handful of songs, a powerful belief in the common people, and a big distorted electric guitar, blasting out songs about love and politics just loud enough to drown out the street traffic and the chatter at the pub. While the straight-to-stereo recording doesn't always do Bragg any favors (especially his warm but rough-edged bellow of a voice), the results put the emphasis squarely on the songs, and they're good enough to merit the scrutiny. While Bragg was willing and able to write marching anthems ("To Have and Have Not"), he was just as interested in the ongoing war between the sexes, as folks on the block either look for love ("The Milkman of Human Kindness") or try to figure out what to do once they've found it ("The Man in the Iron Mask"), and while he wasn't above pointing out the foibles of others, Bragg's best songs spoke about the details of everyday life with clarity, compassion, and genuine humor. Running just a shade over 16 minutes, in its original form Life's a Riot was short and simple, but it made clear that Bragg was inarguably a first-class songwriter. In 2006, Yep Roc Records reissued Life's a Riot in expanded form with the addition of an 11-track bonus disc (though the two CDs combined include less than 45 minutes of music, making one wonder why they didn't slap all the songs on a single disc). The bonus disc is dominated by six outtakes from the Life's a Riot sessions, and a few early demos and home recordings. The alternate unreleased version of "Strange Things Happen" and both takes of "The Cloth" are especially interesting, as they feature Bragg accompanied by a low-tech drum machine, suggesting his "guitar/vocal" style was not set as strongly in stone as imagined early on (the same can also be said of the phased-out guitars on the outtake of "This Guitar Says Sorry"), though the fact this stuff went unreleased for so long makes it clear Bragg knew what worked best and what didn't. However, crackling covers of "Fear Is a Man's Best Friend" and "Route 66" (the latter given an Anglocentric remake as "A13, Trunk Road to the Sea") close out the bonus CD in style, and make for a solid repackaging of a fine record.
In 1983, Billy Bragg was a guy with a cheap electric guitar, a rough but passionate voice, and a knack for writing and singing straight from the heart whether he was discussing leftist political concerns or the mysterious interactions between men and women. The guy has a band and the political issues that have caught his attention are trickier 20 years later, but he's still enchanted and puzzled by love, and hasn't stopped writing worthwhile songs about it. Must I Paint You a Picture? The Essential Billy Bragg is a three-disc, 50-song compilation that does an admirable job of capturing the hills and valleys of Bragg's recording career, opening up with "A New England" from his debut EP, Life's a Riot With Spy vs. Spy, and closing with a cut from 2002's England, Half English. A spin through this set suggests that Bragg's best (or at least most affecting) work arrived in the early stages of his career, as disc one (which follows Bragg through Worker's Playtime) is a decidedly more solid and absorbing listen than disc two (the material from the disappointing William Bloke in particular weighs down the collection's second act), and his love songs have stood the test of time a shade better than his political material (the miners' strike may be over, but broken hearts are timeless). But there are plenty of gems to be found throughout this collection, and Must I Paint You a Picture? serves as a potent reminder that in the grand tradition of Bob Dylan, even Bragg's lesser albums contain a handful of truly memorable songs worth hearing; if this isn't the ideal Billy Bragg collection, it's an excellent introduction, a solid career overview, and a lovely reminder of how much he has to say about the heart and the mind. Initial pressings come with a ten-song bonus disc that adds several hard to find selections, including Bragg's Anglophile rewrite of "Route 66," a telling duet with the late Ted Hawkins, and a bootleg remix that merges Bragg with the Hives.
“Don’t Try This At Home” is the third album from the “Bard Of Barking” using a full band, and a bunch of usual suspects. Michael Stipe and Peter Buck from R.E.M join him for a little vocal and mandolin tussle, ex Smith Johnny Marr plays and produces two songs, and the sultry tones of Kirsty Maccoll add warmth to some of the more stark numbers. Bragg’s songs sound more ethereal, almost traditional using a full band, and a world away from his earlier neo punk rants. There’s no doubt that Bragg is a superb lyricist, with a take on subjects hardly ever transferred to popular music, but his earlier works were at times empty and raw, and the introduction of a full time band fills the songs with fuller melodies that works well throughout. Bragg covers all bases, and this would lyrically be his most diverse album. A deliberate move away from the Marxist preaching he was well known for; he covers relationships, his father’s death, protégé sportsmen who turn to religion, and sex. The album builds around the hit single “Sexuality”; a rambling pop workout which is both funny and full of self parody. His words are all ardent dreaming of the rock Star lifestyle Billy never adhered to. “I’ve had relations with women of all nations” is Billy just dreaming, and “I look like Robert De Niro, I drive a Mitsubishi Zero” couldn’t be further from the truth. There are many enjoyable moments including the opening anti Fascist Soap Box drama “Accident Waiting To Happen”, the story of Soccer wonder kid Peter Knowles, who gave his career up for Jehovah on “God’s Footballer”, “You Woke Up My Neighbourhood”, and the lonely “Dolphins”, a rare cover. For this reviewer the best song is his lament to his father on “Tank Park Salute”, where the emotion in his voice rips your heart when he sings “It’s always dark at the top of the stairs” and “You were so tall, how could you fall?” Should you look for an introduction to the music of Billy Bragg “Don’t Try This At Home” is a great place to start, where raw beauty is unassuming, and intelligence is never contrived to mean anything but warm honesty.