Credit: Found On Internet

Release date: 9 October
Label: Cooking Vinyl

When I was younger, I just never got Billy Bragg. In fact, the sound of his flat, slack vocals and unfashionable social conscience blaring from my brother’s bedroom was just plain irritating.

Let’s be honest, Bragg did not get into the music industry because someone told him, X-Factor style, that he had a good voice.

But many things – even a good whine – improve with age, and now I hold my hand up and say I was wrong about The Bard of Barking.

A second retrospective box set and individual two-disc collections spanning 1988-2006 explains just why you should, and can, catch up with Bragg’s legacy.

Bragg’s music has always been heavily laced with socio-political concerns, which partly explains why the 48-year-old is considered one of Britain’s foremost troubadours, and there is plenty to get your teeth into on Billy Bragg Volume 2.

Waiting For The Great Leap Forwards is an inspirational call to “start your own revolution,” driven along by jangly guitar, thick piano chords and a momentous marching drum beat. Bragg is still demanding answers, albeit with a more grown-up swagger, on No Power Without Accountability. 

But tub-thumping is not the only theme to Bragg’s varied work and the singer-songwriter displays a warming, vulnerable streak when he draws on more personal reflections.

Must I Paint You A Picture is a hidden gem, where Bragg describes his paramour as “a little black cloud in a dress”. This Gulf Between Us is another articulate ballad weaved around a simple Gaelic melody played out on cello and fiddle.

The gargantuan single Sexuality stands alone as a quivering tongue-in-cheek romp which owes much to the signature biting guitar riffs of the song’s producer Johnny Marr.

The track is not even vaguely erotic but instead exudes wit with lyrics such as: “Stop playing with yourselves in hard currency hotels,” and, my long-remembered favourite, “I had an uncle who once played for Red Star Belgrade.”

Bragg’s later work is certainly less instant and more challenging, which is probably just what happens when troubadours mature in their Devon homes.  Qualifications is pared down to just a guitar plus reverb while 12345678 is a skiffle squiggle of a song.  Bragg’s cover of That’s Entertainment or his punk version of Revolution will also be a matter of personal taste.