”Woody Guthrie was the first alternative musician. While Hollywood and Tin Pan Alley were busy peddling escapism to the masses, Woody was out there writing songs from a different point of view with a lyrical poetry that captured the awesome majesty of America’s scenery and the dry as dust humor of its working folks.”

This is how British singer-songwriter Billy Bragg, perhaps best known for his early-90’s single “Sexuality,” describes Woody Guthrie in the liner notes of 2000’s Mermaid Avenue, Volume II, the follow-up album to his 1998 collaboration with alt-country heroes Wilco, in which they have written and recorded music to accompany the lyrics to songs Woody Guthrie recorded on his deathbed.

One has to wonder, then, why it takes a Briton to capture so perfectly the fiercely independent spirit of a musician whose work uniquely defined what it meant to be an American in the first half of the twentieth century. If this isn’t perhaps the most definitive evidence of the artistic crisis currently facing the music industry in the United States, I don’t know what is. Fortunately, Wilco’s efforts in continuing Woody Guthrie’s legacy offer a glimmer of hope.

Ultimately, this philosophical quibble is of little relevance to the superior music found of Mermaid Avenue, Volume II, an album with a sound that is decidedly “timeless,” though not in the typical sense of that word. These songs don’t sound like the recordings Woody Guthrie has left behind (most famously, “This Land is Your Land, This Land is My Land”), nor do they sound like anything that’s being recorded today. It isn’t a “new” Woody Guthrie album, and similarly it isn’t a new Billy Bragg or a new Wilco album, either. Writer Geoffrey Himes of No Depression magazine offers a better interpretation than I could come up with after a full year of listening to this album:

Mermaid Avenue, Vol. II sounds like a hypothetical collaboration between Woody Guthrie and Buddy Holly & the Crickets, recorded sometime in the late 1950’s.

That’s a very shrewd observation on Himes’ part, because it singly incorporates both the growth and directional changes in Guthrie’s lyrics and the lively music that Bragg and Wilco’s Jeff Tweedy and Jay Bennett have composed to accompany those lyrics. Nothing Woody Guthrie had written before the onset of his Huntington’s Chorea left him unable to record his music really predicts the poetry of songs like “Secret of the Sea” or the layered imagery of “My Flying Saucer” and “Remember the Mountain Bed,” which rival Kurt Cobain at his most ironic and Tori Amos at her most obtuse, while somehow retaining the accessibility which had endeared Guthrie to his audience of sensitive political progressives.

What elevates this disc above the first Mermaid Avenue is its consistency. While it may not contain any one song as beautiful and haunting as “Way Over Yonder in a Minor Key,” the songs here ultimately form a more cohesive album— an album that’s an absolute essential for any fan of folk, rock, country, and alternative music.

In general, the album alternates consistently between Wilco and Billy Bragg compositions—speaking only in terms of the writers of the music, not necessarily the performers of the songs—with Bragg taking the helm on 9 of the 15 tracks, and Tweedy (occasionally joined by co-writer Bennett) penning the remaining six. The balance here is the key: Wilco are the more compelling overall performers, but Bragg seems to channel Guthrie’s spirit more completely. The lyrics are all Woody Guthrie originals, which he wrote between 1939 and 1955, all of which have been preserved by the efforts of The Woody Guthrie Archive.

Mermaid Avenue, Volume II opens with the Tweedy-penned “Airline to Heaven,” an unexpectedly frank and uplifting spiritual song. Contemporary Christian rock bands (Jars of Clay, Audio Adrenaline) don’t even belong in the same league as this cut. It flat-out rocks, and it’s a great example of Woody Guthrie’s tendency to point out hypocrites in all walks of life:
”A lot of speakers speak/ A lot of preachers preach/ When you lay their salary on the line/ But to bow your head and pray/ Is the only earthly way/ That you can fly to heaven on time…”

From that rollicking opener, there are only two tracks that detract in any way appreciable way from the quality of the album. On the children’s lullaby “I Was Born,” for which Bragg wrote the music, vocal duties are turned over to Natalie Merchant. I’m not sure exactly what Bragg’s intentions were at this point—if he was trying to make this lullaby, which is lyrically the weakest cut on the disc, a truly convincing lullaby, then choosing Natalie Merchant, who possesses the most bafflingly monotone, lifeless singing voice in rock music was a smart move. It is more likely that Merchant, clearly an intelligent woman who appreciates fine music, simply wanted a part on the album. “I Was Born,” unfortunately, brings … Vol. II to an abrupt, grinding halt, and it has me reaching for the “SKIP” button on my CD player every time I listen to this album.

The other track that really sticks out is “All You Fascists.” Here’s a song that showcases Woody Guthrie’s political ideals at their most pointed, and Billy Bragg performs this balls-to-the-wall tirade with all the conviction Guthrie would have. Nevertheless, the refrain of ”All you fascists are bound to lose” is indicative of the key “problem” at the core of this overall project. If this were really a collaboration between Guthrie and Buddy Holly from forty years ago, the politics of the song would be of the utmost relevance. In 2000, however, “All You Fascists” is a curious little anachronism. Now, the word “fascist” conjures images of irate high school students, outraged by restrictive dress codes or “No Cell Phone” policies. Politically, the song lacks the punch it would have had in Guthrie’s heyday.

But just two weak songs out of a 15 is certainly a favorable percentage for Billy Bragg and Wilco, who have recorded one of 2000’s most compelling albums.

In addition to “Airline to Heaven,” several other highlights are worth mentioning:

“Hot Rod Hotel” is an autobiographical retelling of Guthrie’s experiences working as a housekeeper in a sleazy New York hotel. ”A bloody flood could never messed these rooms up any worse/ It looked like Moe had used this room to grease and breed a horse.” Now there is an image you won’t soon forget…

“Secret of the Sea” is another song derived from Guthrie’s fascinating personal experiences— the lengthy, tense hours spent as a merchant marine during World War II clearly had an impact on Guthrie’s psyche. ”Tell me, could you ever tell the secret of the sea?/ Of these high rolling waves along the shore?/ The footprints of lovers that come here to love/ By the tides washed away forever more// Who can tell the secret of the sea?” Wilco perform this delicate, poetic song with the combination of wide-eyed innocence and jaded world-traveler demanded by the lyrics.

Woody Guthrie, though never even remotely a “rock” artist, was, at heart, the first alternative musician. Armed with the soul of a poet and the passion of an oppressed people, Guthrie always found a way to communicate injustices with both an ironic detachment and the utmost compassion. On “Stetson Kennedy,” he says, ”I ain’t the world’s best writer nor the world’s best speller/ But when I believe in something, I’m the loudest yeller”.

It’s one of the few instances when the lyrics of Mermaid Avenue, Volume II aren’t truthful: as the songs on this album attest, decades after his death, Woody Guthrie is a lyricist without peer. How fortunate we are that talents such as Billy Bragg and Wilco have shown their dedication to sharing his “lost” works in a political climate that so often seems soulless.

For Fans of: Billy Bragg, Wilco (duh), Lucinda Williams, Bob Dylan, Neil Young, Tom Petty, REM, Sheryl Crow.



Recommended: Yes

Great Music to Play While: Driving