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Billy Bragg, Talking with the Taxman About Poetry CD cover artwork

Billy Bragg, Talking with the Taxman About Poetry

Audio CD

Disk ID: 1132915

Disk length: 38m 32s (12 Tracks)

Original Release Date: 1986

Label: Unknown

View all albums by Billy Bragg...

Tracks & Durations

1. Greetings to the New Brunette 3:30
2. Train Train 2:12
3. The Marriage 2:31
4. Ideology 3:27
5. Levi Stubbs' Tears 3:31
6. Honey, I'm a Big Boy Now 4:06
7. There Is Power in a Union 2:48
8. Help Save the Youth of America 2:48
9. Wishing the Days Away 2:29
10. The Passion 2:54
11. The Warmest Room 3:57
12. The Home Front 4:10

Note: The information about this album is acquired from the publicly available resources and we are not responsible for their accuracy.

Review

Billy Bragg's third full-length album, 1986's Talking with the Taxman About Poetry, is an uncompromised refinement of his brash, anti-Thatcher, busking-bloke persona. Bragg's palette stretches beyond the jagged-rhythmic-guitar-plus-curious-voice approach of the first two albums: "Ideology" and "Marriage" see the addition of horns and piano, "Train Train" adds violin, and singer Kirsty MacColl and guitarist Johnny Marr make guest appearances. The slashing, lovely "Levi Stubbs' Tears," a sad slice-of-life number told from a woman's perspective, showcases the singer-songwriter's ability to write well beyond protest songs. And only Bragg could pen a love song such as "Greetings to the New Brunette" and pull it off. In an off-key yet warm warble, he almost croons, "Shirley, your sexual politics have left me all of a muddle / Shirley, we are joined in the ideological cuddle," one of pop's most delightfully awkward rhymes. And then of course there are the protest songs, such as bracing, simple, Woody Guthrie-ish "There Is Power in a Union." The record's title is taken from a 1926 poem by the poet of the Russian Revolution, Vladimir Mayakovsky. --Mike McGonigalBilly Bragg, once-described as a "one-man Clash," has spent the last two decades writing and performing passionate, witty, socially conscious music. This is a reissue of Talking with the Taxman About Poetry, Billy's 1985 album, about which Rolling Stone glowed, "On this album, cheerfully subtitled 'The difficult Third Album,' Bragg expands his pared-down sound ever-so-slightly (violin here, piano and tambourine there). While purists might bitch, the result is a winning mesh, as clever as Elvis Costello, as melodic as Ray Davies and as rocking as Chuck Berry."

Other Versions

Albums are mined from the various public resources and can be actually the same but different in the tracks length only. We are keeping all versions now.

Talking with the Taxman About Poetry

Tracks: 12, Disk length: 38m 32s

Talking with the Taxman About Poetry

Tracks: 12, Disk length: 38m 31s (-1m 59s)

Talking with the Taxman About Poetry

Tracks: 12, Disk length: 38m 38s (+0m 6s)

Talking with the Taxman About Poetry

Tracks: 24 (+12 tracks), Disk length: 1h 18m 54s (+40m 22s)

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