Billy Bragg & Wilco “Mermaid Avenue” (1998)
Woody Guthrie’s daughter Nora was looking for someone to put music to a
collection of her father’s unreleased lyrics. After hearing Bragg
playing at a Guthrie tribute concert, she contacted him about the
project. Bragg in turn contacted Wilco to help him with the songs and
to arrange some themselves.
Bragg and Wilco have both already featured in this list, and the project
‘on paper’ interested me, so I was keen to check this out.
It exceeded my expectations, with a sound that brings to my mind Ween’s
country moments. Interesting lyrics backed with a mix of old timey Americana,
and more modern alt-country and bouncy Beatles-esque melodic and arrangement
sensibilities (“Another Man’s Done Gone” almost sounds like a
McCartney-esque piano ballad).
There’s the rootin’ tootin’ opener “Walt Whitman’s Niece”, the intimate
acoustic guitar and voice of “Ingrid Bergman” and “I Guess I Planted”
has hints of Elvis Costello circa “My Aim is True”.
My favourite though is “Way Over Yonder in a Minor Key” which features backing vocals from Natalie Merchant and is frankly just a beautiful song.
Two more collections of songs would eventually be produced by Bragg and Wilco under the Mermaid Avenue name.
