Mermaid Avenue Vol. II

Amazon.com

Who knew that after the undeniable, sometimes shimmering, sometimes rustic magic of Mermaid Avenue that there was enough quality material for a second volume? By setting their own music to Woody Guthrie's lyrics, Billy Bragg and Wilco once again offer a 50-minute testament to Guthrie's long, dynamic shadow. This sophomore meeting is as balanced between the up-tempo and the down-tempo as was the first Mermaid. Jeff Tweedy's rasp gives all the Wilco-driven tunes a certain grit, and the songs Bragg takes on have a luminescent, frank earnestness that intensifies the delivery of Guthrie's lyrical social critiques. "Hot Rod Hotel," with Bragg on the mic, melds the two approaches best, and "Secret of the Sea" is the CD's poppiest centerpiece--aptly aimed at radio airplay like the first Mermaid's "California Stars." Natalie Merchant's playful "I Was Born" is brief but sweet, just as bluesman Corey Harris's "Against the Law" is an uplift, with his passionate vocal wail mirroring the political gist of Guthrie's words. The moody closers "Black Wind Blowing" and "Someday, Some Morning, Sometime" end Volume 2 with a pair of sweetly sad gems, one a Bragg-sung folk blues that mourns the loss of cotton crops in the American dustbowl era, the other a Tweedy-sung paean to lost love. At the dawn of a new millennium, with labor and the distribution of wealth as pressing historical issues that disrupt every International Monetary Fund and World Trade Organization soiree, the time is right for Woody. --Andrew Bartlett, ISBN13: B00004TBES ISBN10: B00004TBES Material Type: audioCD