Live Review: Billy Bragg, Jordie Lane

It was more of a mini support slot for Jordie Lane, with a set that comprised of just four songs. Despite the brevity, he delivered them in an engaging story-like fashion, particularly in the tender poetry of I Could Die Looking At You.

For Billy Bragg it was a set of two halves which saw him switch from lecturer to preacher mode during a two-and-a-half hour performance. The first part of the evening saw a seated Bragg performing Woody Guthrie songs from the Mermaid Avenue collection undertaken with Wilco. Often the songs were considerably shorter than the preamble but the intention was to give an idea of the man as well as his music. Slipknot was heavy going in theme and tune whilst Ingrid Bergman was dirty fun. Go Down To The Water was quite possibly originally just a poem rather than lyrics – Bragg set it to the classic Irish She Moved Through The Fair and the result was mesmerising, testament to his seemingly natural affiliation with Guthrie. The rebel-spouting All You Fascists, which closed the first section, was a good segue into the protest nature of Bragg's own material.

After the brief break, Bragg returned standing with guitar and a sense of unleashed energy for a trawl through his own extensive back catalogue. His ideologies remain as intense as ever though they are delivered with a touch more humour these days. Perhaps a good proportion of the sold-out crowd once closely associated themselves with Bragg and his political views but now turned up more for the music, but that didn't really matter. Bragg sings from the heart with the sort of engagement and desire that's all too rare. Everyone sings along with gusto to There Is Power In A Union, as the tone of Bragg's common-man voice ran free and to build up the anthem of The Milkman Of Human Kindness. His cynicism lament, Tomorrow's Going To Be A Better Day, was full of hope whilst newer song, Never Buy The Sun, was overpowering in its emotion. His amended lyric in Waiting For The Great Leap Forwards of “Tony Abbott thinks all women should be quiet, but all I can say is free Pussy Riot” even kept things topical. However, it was the simmering passion of I Keep Faith that summed up Bragg and his music and why he's still as relevant and vital to music today as ever.