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Album review: Billy Bragg

By Glenn Gamboa Newsday

Folk

Billy Bragg

Mr. Love and Justice | 3 stars out of 5

Billy Bragg assembles the best bits of his various incarnations as busker, punk, folkie and political gadfly and throws in some touching love songs for his new album Mr. Love and Justice.

He's as cutting as ever on The Johnny ­Carcinogenic Show as he sings about the marketing of cigarettes, complaining, “What other industry could ever get away with ­contaminating their best customers this way?” over a pretty, blues-tinged pop song.

He carries on Woody Guthrie's tradition in O Freedom, a dramatic folk tale of post-9/11 terrorist investigations.

So much for justice, but Bragg is best when he's singing about love, in the spare, touching You Make Me Brave and in the laid-back, lovely I Keep Faith, with the great Robert Wyatt.

Glenn Gamboa, Newsday