Track Listing

Disc 1:

1. It Says Here
2. Love Gets Dangerous
3. Myth Of Trust
4. From A Vauxhall Velox
5. Saturday Boy
6. Island Of No Return
7. St. Swithin's Day
8. Like Soldiers Do
9. This Guitar Says Sorry
10. Strange Things Happen
11. Lover Sings

Disc 2:

1. It Must Be A River
2. Won't Talk About It
3. Talking Wag Club Blues
4. You Got The Power
5. Last Time
6. Back To The Old House
7. Lover Sings
8. Which Side Are You On
9. It Says Here
10. Between The Wars
11. World Turned Upside Down

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #39435 in Music
• Released on: 2006-03-06
• Number of discs: 2

Customer Reviews

Don't believe the price!
Good to see all the Bragg albums in this format. BUT BEWARE, I have tried to buy many of the albums at the quoted price only to find the order deleted and an email explaining that sometimes Amazon price things by mistake. They still have not altered the price on the website, so BEWARE.

Stripped back Success.
This is Billy Bragg's second album, and these welcome reissues give the opportunity to explore for the uninitiated. I had never really paid too much attention to Billy Bragg until hearing 'The Saturday Boy' on a recent John Peel compilation given away with Mojo magazine. I love the sudden sound of the trumpet to back the harsh trebley electric guitar. It works well. The highlight of this album is probably 'St Swithin's Day' a beautiful love song sung with longing by the young Bragg. The sound is probably a kind of love or hate thing. Billy's albums tend to be just him with a guitar going through a very treble sounding amp. The harsh cockney tone of his voice can be an acquired taste at first, but after a while I really began to enjoy it. At 35 minutes, the original album may have appeared a little thin on the ground for remaster, but that problem is solved by an excellent second disc of outtakes, unused tracks, b-sides etc. If you are new to Mr Bragg, give this a spin. I did and was pleasantly suprised. Gonna get some more of the reissues now I think....

Socialism & broken hearts for the masses
More socialism and broken hearts for the masses. While most people measure his later work by the standard of his first few releases (which are often considered his best), it's my conviction that the best was yet to come. It's true that his blend of romantic and political beliefs is presented in the clearest, most passionate form by these tracks, but on the downside they are also harder to digest in large quantities. Basically, nothing crucial has changed since Life's a Riot with Spy vs. Spy (the sound's slightly less crude and there are some overdubs), save for the fact that there are not as many highlights (translation: songs that really stick with you). It starts off good though, with "It Says Here," the riff of which sounds remarkably similar to that of The Hoodoo Gurus' "Tojo," released a while before this one. I guess it's coincidence, and anyway, this one here is basically a critique of the written press ("Where they offer you a feature on stockings and suspenders, next to a call for stiffer penalties for sex offenders") who all too often (in Billy's words) forget there are two sides to every story. It's pretty obvious that Bragg's realist poetry is/was quite unique: whereas most other songwriters deal with the highs and lows of life in a much more general, "poetic" way, Bragg focuses on little things, such as women shaving their legs (or not having to shave them yet), refers to sex with lines such as "flushing our babies down the drain" and mentions the smell of hairspray on a hot day.

Repeatedly, it's pretty obvious that Bragg found his identity in the wake of punk, as the jangly guitars of "From a Vauxhall Velox" and fierceness of "Strange Things Happen" suggest. Here's a guy who combines the idealism of The Clash with the socialism of Woody Guthrie and the high hopes of Springsteen's "small" people (and are they in for a disappointment), and with lines such as "Some people say love is blind, but I think that's just a bit short-sighted" proves he owns a voice completely his own. The remainder of the album also ranges from the personal/internal to observations about the outside world. The album's unquestionable highlight is the terrific "The Saturday Boy," a recognizable depiction of teenage love that unsurprisingly doesn't last long ("In the end it took me a dictionary to find out the meaning of unrequited"), with an unexpected trumpet solo. Almost as successful are "Island of No Return," an accusatory song told from the perspective of a soldier fighting in the Falklands War, and the reflective "St. Swithin's Day" that's often considered a classic Bragg song - but that's a bit of an exaggeration. I always liked the dark, throbbing riff of "The Myth of Trust" as well, while "Love Gets Dangerous" and "This Guitar Says Sorry" ooze out teenage rebellion with their `50's-style and Bo Diddley-rhythm, respectively (just like "A New England" did on the debut EP). So, Brewing Up doesn't offer anything Life's a Riot didn't already manage to, in fact, it's the logical continuation of it (Life's Still a Riot, then), so the main difference is that this full-length is just a shade weaker, lacking a signature song like "A New England" or a restrained highlight like "The Man in the Iron Mask."

Note: The good news is that these first two releases, as well as the three-song EP Between the Wars (containing one track written by Bragg, as well as two traditional labor songs) are compiled on Back to Basics, which is easily available.