Billy Bragg & Wilco - Mermaid Avenue
|
List Price: Category: Music CD See more new music releases 
|
|---|
(Click here)
Canadian Music Store
Free Music Notes for Mermaid Avenue
Free Music Review: Great CD!
Hit: 5 Stars
Thank goodness you can't actually wear out a CD from overuse. I bought Mermaid Avenue a month ago and I can't remember the last time I listened to one recording so often. I've always considered Woody Guthrie a great poet/musician, and I think Billy Bragg and Wilco have done his lyrics justice. Every cut on this record is good and it's obvious that this was a labor of love on the part of all the artists that participated. What else can I say...buy it.
Free Music Review: The Present Marries the Past, Hope for the Future!
Hit: 5 Stars
For those of us who were young and passionate about social issues in the 50's, 60's or 70's, this fantastic album lets us know that the concerns of activists of the 20th century are alive and well in the 21st century.My own 20-something son turned me on to the music of Wilco, playing it during our Sunday dinners. "Is that...who are you listening to?" He smiled smugly as I tried to figure out who this was.
Dylan-like lyrics sung with by a Dylan-who-could-sing? Springsteen? Arlo Guthrie? Or someone entirely different? He grinned as he shared with me his favorite group (Wilco) and their best ever album.
I've listened to other Wilco albums - this one is absolutely the best to me - perhaps I'm more of a Bragg fan than I'd ever have known, or maybe its just the bleeding heart liberal still kicking within me. The messages are clear, the music consistently good. On his other albums, some songs take a bit of getting used to - the present mixes with the past in ways that are sometimes refreshing, uplifting, promising - sometimes grating (even my son says so, but he doesn't care!)
But this album rocks, in a folk music with message kind of way. This is because, of course, the lyrics are Woody Guthrie's, scribblings written on scraps of paper, about times that evidently haven't changed. Guthrie's daughter Nora gave permission for the words to be turned into song - British songwriter/musician Billie Bragg explains this in the amazon interview shown in the sidebar to your left.
"Every year we waste enough to feed the ones who starve," Tweedy shouts in Guthrie's "Christ for President," maybe the greatest campaign song ever written. In the remarkable "Unwelcome Guest," via Guthrie's words, Bragg adopts the persona of a rider on his way to rob a rich man who has earned his wealth by "stealing and lying and gambling," and he ends with this steely-eyed prediction:
"They'll take the money and spread it out equal / Just like the Bible and prophets suggest / But the men who go riding to help these poor workers / The rich will cut down like an unwelcome guest.'
"Has there ever been a vision of social justice so moral, or so clear about its price?" (read the whole article, its good!)
I liked this album because the music is wonderful to hear, the lyrics have thought and meaning still - a wedding of what was then, with what is still now, the album takes something old, something new, something borrowed and something blue - and turns it into a timely, cross-generational piece of art.
Free Music Review: The Best Concept Album
Hit: 5 Stars
Billy Bragg and Wilco have captured Woody Guthrie's spirit in an evocative and spare album of folk songs from America's past. The songs are so spookily perfect that you could swear ol' Woody is in the studio with the band, engineering the sound. This CD belongs in your collection. You will play it at least once a day.Free Music Review: What an incredible CD!
Hit: 5 Stars
From the moment I first heard the songs on this album on the radio I knew I had to have it. Since I bought it over a year ago I have listened to it countless times and I never get sick of it. The songs are incredible. I can only imagine Woody Guthrie looking down and smiling about what a good job they did.Free Music Review: Order now!
Hit: 5 Stars
If you are reading this all I can ask you is...Why don't you own this cd yet?