ROCK
Tender mercies
"Mr. Love & Justice"
Billy Bragg. Anti-. 12 tracks.
Grade: B+

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On 'Mr. Love & Justice,' his first new album in six years, Billy Bragg offers his anti-war ballad 'Bring 'Em Home.'
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Billy Bragg has been known as a rabble-rouser supreme for much of his career, a modern-day protester whose political passions and razor-sharp lyrics have been matched by few other artists.

That reputation helped make the British singer the perfect choice to collaborate with Wilco on turning unrecorded Woody Guthrie lyrics into a series of exceptional songs for two volumes of "Mermaid Avenue" albums in 1998 and 2000.

Of course, Bragg has been making plenty of his own potent music since breaking through in the early 1980s. A lot of it has been political in nature, but he's also written beautiful songs that have nothing to do with politics. On "Mr. Love & Justice," his first new album in six years, Bragg combines both styles of writing and makes the most out of each.

There's a soulful tenor to much of the disc, with the tone set early thanks to the easy-flowing rhythms and sublime harmonies of the ballad "I Keep Faith."

Bragg goes back and forth between simple, touching tales ("You Make Me Brave") and hard-hitting shots, like the one detailing the fallout from the war on terror, "O Freedom." He also turns up the volume at times, letting the guitars churn and burn on "Something Happened," and later borrowing a bit of musical inspiration from the Band on the captivating title track.

A military man for a brief period, Bragg offers his own companion piece to Pete Seeger's recently-resurrected-by-Bruce Springsteen anti-war ballad "Bring 'Em Home" with his "Sing Their Souls Back Home." The song shows how much the 50-year-old Bragg has matured — he manages to deliver a strong message without shoving it down one's throat. Former folk/punk rockers probably hate words like "matured," but it's the man's sense of tender mercies that makes this album essential listening.

— Kevin O'Hare, Newhouse News Service