BRAGG, BILLY

Personnel includes: Johnny Marr (various instruments). In order to promote his album WILLIAM BLOKE, Billy Bragg released a set of singles in the UK. BLOKE ON BLOKE is a compilation of some of the b-sides from those singles. Though the tracks contained here cover fairly standard thematic ground for Bragg--love, loss, and politics--what makes this collection especially noteworthy is that much of it is in every way the equal of his album tracks. Standouts are "The Boy Done Good" (featuring the legendary Johnny Marr both as co-writer and guitarist), a song that ought to have been on WILLIAM BLOKE; "Rule Nor Reason," featuring a simple guitar and harmonium duet under Bragg's vocal telling of a troubled relationship; and a weirdly reverential, and completely stripped-down, reading of the Smiths song "Never Had No One Ever." The two versions of "Sugardaddy" contained here move the song further from the realm of Bruce Springsteen, the first toward Motown, and the latter heading near dub, but not quite making it. "Thatchites" is a return to the straight-ahead guitar and politics of Bragg's youth.

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