Herald rating: * * *
(Elektra)
Review: Russell Baillie
When the big nose from Barking joined up with the American roots-rockers to write and record some songs using previously unpublished Woody Guthrie lyrics, the sessions apparently resulted in enough for three albums.
Here's No 2, a collection which is less upbeat and cohesive than 1998's fine first instalment.But like the first, this still rises neatly above the worthiness risked by its transatlantic time-warp collaboration.
Highlights include the Bragg-vocalled Hot Rod Hotel and when Wilco's Jeff Tweedy takes the lead on the gospel-country Blood of the Lamb and the Dylanesque opener Airline to Heaven. It's let down in a few places, like Natalie Merchant's earnest warble on the kiddie song I Was Born.
But so far as posthumous encores from long-dead mid-20th Century political folkies go, not bad at all.
<i>Billy Bragg and Wilco:</i> Mermaid Ave Vol. II
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