Bragg proves you can go home

England, Half English\nBilly Bragg and the Blokes\nElektra Records\nBilly Bragg has spent the last four or five years with the American rockers in Wilco, putting unreleased Woody Guthrie lyrics to music for the acclaimed Mermaid Avenue albums. While that work certainly must have satisfied the progressive folk artist in him, using the words of the quintessentially American Guthrie has kept Bragg silent on a topic he's usually quite fond of writing about: being British. If you couldn't guess by the title, his first collection of wholly original songs in five years more than makes up for lost time.\nNot that he's a flag-waving Tory, mind you. Rather, Bragg's attitude towards his home country could be described as ambivalent at best. And he addresses that uneasiness throughout England, Half English -- most noticeably in "Take Down the Union Jack," an anti-patriotic diatribe that probably wouldn't fly too well if it was written in our country right now. Bragg's political consciousness also shines through on "NPWA" -- No Power Without Accountability -- an anti-globalization anthem (see the "anti-" trend here?) that might seem trendy if you didn't know he was singing about this sort of thing 15 years ago.\nAs with all of Bragg's albums, he gives equal time to matters of the heart, including the anti-adulterous "Jane Allen" and "Another Kind of Judy" (cracking tune, but minus five points for the cheap shot at the Pet Shop Boys). But certainly the most affecting moment is the album's closer, "The Tears of My Tracks." The song isn't about unrequited love, or corporate exploitation of third-world cultures -- it's something far more depressing. "I sold all my vinyl yesterday," he sings, and you feel that lump rise in the back of your throat. "Somebody owns all my albums now." Oh boy, here come the waterworks. Steal a man's heart, steal a man's freedom, but for god's sake -- don't make a man sell his records. That's just brutal.\n

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