Billy Bragg and Wilco
Mermaid Avenue, Vol. II
[Elektra]
Rating: 6.3
Everybody please stand up. Come on, all of you. Don't worry, I'm not going to
make you hold your hat to your heart and sing our national anthem. You're
standing-- okay, probably not-- to salute an American folk hero: Woody Guthrie.
Indisputably one of our best singer/songwriters ever, Guthrie was the voice for
those who didn't have one: the abandoned poor and the hard-working middle
class, the despondent and the dreamers. In fact, Woody Guthrie is so historically
important that the Smithsonian currently has an exhibit about him, named after
his most famous song, the anti-"God Bless America" number, "This Land is Your
Land."
But as the existence of such an exhibit would suggest, Guthrie is a cultural
icon only to older generations or the well-informed. The exhibit's video
presentation shows how desperately the curators are trying to expose a new
generation to Guthrie. The video opens with Billy Bragg praising Guthrie as a
"lyrical poet" who brought a personal edge to his socio-political songs. Then
comes Bragg & Wilco's version of "California Stars," off of the first Mermaid
Avenue album. Throughout the video, we also hear from Bono, Ani DiFranco,
Corey Harris, Bob Dylan and The Bruce (as in Springsteen). Of the twelve songs
on the video soundtrack, only four are actually performed by Guthrie, including
a repeat of "This Land is Your Land."
This attempt to contemporize Woody Guthrie began in the spring of 1995 when his
daughter, Nora, approached British singer/songwriter Billy Bragg with over 2,000
sets of lyrics her father never put to music before dying of Huntington's Disease
in 1967. She asked Bragg, a politically-charged musician himself, if he would
like to choose a handful of songs and put them to music. Naturally, Bragg
accepted the honor, and asked Jeff Tweedy to collaborate with him (Tweedy's
background in the alt-folk/country/rock group Uncle Tupelo made him a perfect
candidate). The result was 1998's rightfully critically-acclaimed Mermaid
Avenue, named after Guthrie's street on Coney Island.
Between the two of them, Billy Bragg and Wilco had twelve songs left over from
the Mermaid Avenue sessions. So now, in 2000, they've decided to issue
a second volume, only three songs of which were recorded since the original
sessions. Perhaps this explains why the sound isn't much different this time
around, and why the songs aren't on par with the previous album. Volume II
is like an unnecessary b-sides compilation. And there's a reason why these
songs didn't make it the cut the first time.
Because Guthrie's lyrics are just as exceptional on this album, ranging from the
romantic to the playful to the political, one must look solely at the music for
comparison. Unfortunately, nothing on this album is as beautiful as "California
Stars," as saddening as "At My Window Sad and Lonely," or as touching as "Another
Man's Done Gone."
In some cases, the songs on Volume II are the embarrassing cousins of songs
from the first album. As an album opener, "Airline to Heaven" gets the foot stomping
just as well as "Walt Whitman's Niece" does, but you can't sing along to it. In the
battle of songs about cultural icons, the plodding "Joe DiMaggio Done it Again"
makes "Ingrid Bergman" seem much more pleasant than it really is. And what's more,
the weak moments here are even less passable than they were last time around.
Nonetheless, the album has its high points. Driven by an unvaried, chantey organ
straight out of Dylan's Time Out of Mind, "Hot Rod Hotel" is a haunting
auto-biographical song about Guthrie's dreary jobs as a youth. On "My Flying
Saucer" and "Secret of the Sea," Bragg and Wilco use lofty, wandering guitar
notes to capture the fantasy in Guthrie's lyrics. On "All You Fascists," Bragg
is accompanied by a driving guitar and raucous harmonica. When he belts out, "I'm
gonna tell all you fascists you may be surprised/ The people in this world are
getting organized/ You're bound to lose," he does so with an intensity that befits
the lyrics. And on the final track, "Someday Some Morning Sometime," Tweedy's
vocals are perfectly paced with Guthrie's lyricism.
Ultimately, if it weren't for the first album, I might really enjoy Volume II.
As it is, I'm corrupted by the artistic success of its predecessor.
-Ryan Kearney