Editorial Reviews Music Review:
Music Review
Luis Milan: El Maestro (1536) - Songs & Vihuela Solos - Catherine King / Jacob Heringman
Konzertante Musik des 20. Jahrhunderts
Music: Mexi Mexi [CD-single] [Import]
Metro Breaks: Selected Drum & Bass from Toronto
On a Day Like Today [Extra tracks]
Oh No It's Devo/Freedom Of Choice [Import]
Money Hungry [Explicit Lyrics]
Kiri Te Kanawa - Strauss: Four Last Songs, Orchestral Songs / A. Davis
Amazon.com
Billy Bragg's third full-length album, 1986's Talking with the Taxman About Poetry, is an uncompromised refinement of his brash, anti-Thatcher, busking-bloke persona. Bragg's palette stretches beyond the jagged-rhythmic-guitar-plus-curious-voice approach of the first two albums: "Ideology" and "Marriage" see the addition of horns and piano, "Train Train" adds violin, and singer Kirsty MacColl and guitarist Johnny Marr make guest appearances. The slashing, lovely "Levi Stubbs' Tears," a sad slice-of-life number told from a woman's perspective, showcases the singer-songwriter's ability to write well beyond protest songs. And only Bragg could pen a love song such as "Greetings to the New Brunette" and pull it off. In an off-key yet warm warble, he almost croons, "Shirley, your sexual politics have left me all of a muddle / Shirley, we are joined in the ideological cuddle," one of pop's most delightfully awkward rhymes. And then of course there are the protest songs, such as bracing, simple, Woody Guthrie-ish "There Is Power in a Union." The record's title is taken from a 1926 poem by the poet of the Russian Revolution, Vladimir Mayakovsky. --Mike McGonigal