{"id":22223,"date":"2021-12-26T05:30:18","date_gmt":"2021-12-26T10:30:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/?p=22223"},"modified":"2021-12-26T15:30:05","modified_gmt":"2021-12-26T20:30:05","slug":"album-review-billy-bragg-the-million-things-that-never-happened","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/2021\/12\/26\/album-review-billy-bragg-the-million-things-that-never-happened\/","title":{"rendered":"Album Review: Billy Bragg &#8212; The Million Things That Never Happened"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright size-full wp-image-22224\" src=\"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/12\/billy_bragg.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"350\" height=\"350\" srcset=\"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/12\/billy_bragg.jpg 350w, http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/12\/billy_bragg-300x300.jpg 300w, http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/12\/billy_bragg-150x150.jpg 150w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 350px) 100vw, 350px\" \/>Let nearly 40 years pass, and some things are almost certain to change. If your exposure to Billy Bragg commenced with his 1983 debut <i>Life\u2019s a Riot with Spy vs Spy<\/i> and its standout track \u201cA New England\u201d \u2013 and then you didn\u2019t hear anything from him again until now, you\u2019d be in for a bit of a shock. Though it would be covered in memorable, swoonworthy fashion by Kirsty MacColl, the original version of \u201cA New England\u201d is a spare folk-punk number, with the only sounds provided by a lone electric guitar and Bragg\u2019s <em>veddy<\/em> streetwise British-accented voice.<\/p>\n<p>Pop in <i>The Million Things That Never Happened<\/i>, Bragg\u2019s 13<sup>th<\/sup> (if you count the two he did with Wilco) album, and you\u2019ll hear something quite different. Gone are the punk trappings, and in their place is a fully formed, full-band aesthetic. And Bragg\u2019s voice seems to have lost much of its British character; though hints or the accent surface here and there, for most of <i>Million Things<\/i>, Billy Bragg sounds like an American singer&#8230; singing Americana.<\/p>\n<p>There are exceptions: \u201cGood Days and Bad Days\u201d feels much like the Bragg of old, with spare guitar work and a more readily identifiable British character. But hints of Carole King and mid-period Beatles filter in and out of the tune.<\/p>\n<p>Pedal steel guitars dominate the album, as do softly swaying melodies. Bragg\u2019s gift for memorable songwriting hasn\u2019t left him, and that\u2019s an important through-line that connects his new music with the sounds he was making in the early \u201880s.<\/p>\n<p>There\u2019s a wistful, seen-it-all character that permeates all twelve songs. Even the song titles telegraph that vibe. For example, \u201cReflections on the Mirth of Creativity,\u201d \u201cThe Buck Doesn\u2019t Stop Here No More.\u201d But dogged, hard-won optimism figures nearly as prominently. <i>The Million Things That Never Happened<\/i> is a close, intimate listening experience, and if in fact you have missed Bragg\u2019s work these last many years, his latest album is a fine re-entry point.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Let nearly 40 years pass, and some things are almost certain to change. If your exposure to Billy Bragg commenced with his 1983 debut Life\u2019s a Riot with Spy vs [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":22224,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,30,49,65],"tags":[4741],"class_list":["post-22223","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-americana","category-folk","category-new-release","category-review","tag-billy-bragg","cat-6-id","cat-30-id","cat-49-id","cat-65-id","has_thumb"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22223","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22223"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22223\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22225,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22223\/revisions\/22225"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/22224"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22223"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22223"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22223"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}