Buff up your music knowledge - it's time to test it out on this week's Snapshots. Slay the clues below, identify the artists, and work out what might connect their songs...
10. Oft welcomed, a comet flowed (twice).
9. Connected to a celebrity's thigh.
8. Headwear that can't be plaited.
7. Found in the lobby and nowhere else.
6. Murder via heavenly bodies.
5. Maternal agony.
4. Jim Morrison claimed to be one.
3. Hipster friend quits card game.
2. Axe murderess needs to eat more pies.
1. Linked to the Church and the Quakers.
In every generation, there is a chosen one. But who will have chosen the right answer today?
While Billy Bragg might think he's too old to play the angry young man card anymore, nobody seems to have told Jim Bob he should relinquish that role. His latest record is as angry - and witty - as anything he recorded with Carter The Unstoppable Sex Machine, and he's still got plenty to complain about in the world around him... perhaps more than ever.
Like a vicious stand-up routine set to record, this is frequently hilarious, but also makes you think. A few choice examples include...
All that, plus the best song I've heard about Lockdown yet... it almost makes me miss those halcyon days when we were only allowed out for an hour's exercise a day. Almost.
15. Billy Bragg - The Million Things That Never Happened
My initial reaction to this record was that it was probably the most mellow thing Billy had ever recorded... and with the world as it is, surely we need a Billy who's angrier than ever right now?
Then I realised, the idea of Billy as an angry young man that still exists at the forefront of my mind, was already way out of date when he recorded Brickbat 25 years ago...
I used to want to plant bombs at the Last Night of the Proms
But now you'll find me with the baby, in the bathroom,
With that big shell, listening for the sound of the sea,
The baby and me
The Billy we find on this record feels at times defeated, even depressed, most notably on Good Days And Bad Days...
Spending my days like I’m lost in a fog
Got nowhere to walk that big old black dog
And I just can’t believe what this has done to my health
Don’t judge me too harshly, I can do that myself
As the days blur into one
I just can’t seem to get anything done
Then again, isn't that just how many of us feel after the last couple of years? So maybe this is the most honest post-Lockdown record you'll hear. And just as he was on Brickbat, Billy seems resigned to his new role, though hopeful that he might one day rekindle the fires of old...
It's hard to get your bearings in a world that doesn't care
Positions I took long ago feel comfy as an old armchair
But the kids that pull the statues down they challenge me to see
The gap between the man I am and the man I want to be
Ultimately, this is an album that grew on me with every listen, and now I snuggle into it like a comfy pair of slippers. It might not be the Billy I expected, but maybe it is the Billy I need. Maybe it's the Billy we all need right now.
Their first album in 19 years, and it was like they'd never even been away. Of course, Justin has been ploughing a solo furrow for the last two decades, but his reunion with co-writer Iain Harvey brought a welcome poppiness back to his typical lyrical misanthropy.
Together they took aim at Brexit (Close Your Eyes & Think of England), the shameful behaviour of their peers (Musicians & Beer) and a society that just can't be arsed anymore (A Nation of Caners). There were love songs in the mix too (It's Feelings was the closest they've got to recaptured the Byrdsy jangle of Roll To Me), but also a healthy dose of self-mockery on You Can't Go Back, a song (and video) that questions whether a pair of grumpy old men still have a right to pass themselves off as pop stars...
Hopefully, they've decided that they do, and they'll be back for more soon.
What can save us from the horrors of the last couple of years? And by that, I don't just mean the pandemic, but also the politicians? Rodney Crowell has the answer, and we should all hope that if we end up in triage, he's the doctor assigned. Because his answer is a very simple one, but still the only thing we need to see us through: love.
Beginning his career in 1972, Rodney Crowell has been making music as long as I've been on this earth. I've dipped into his catalogue briefly in the past, but this record definitely encouraged me to investigate it in more depth.
