Billy Bragg
EL REY THEATRE
PHOTO BY AGA DEBIEC
Jesca Hoop: See Saturday.
PHOTO BY NATHAN PRESLEY
Heartless Bastards: See Tuesday.
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The music of Brit bard Billy Bragg is sozzled with nostalgia (he's perhaps best known stateside for his Woody Guthrie–inspired Mermaid Avenue collaborations with Wilco), but his often political, broadly lefty lyrics are soberly and vividly in the here and now. Like a lo-fi, less stylistically self-conscious Paul Weller, this folkie bloke is utterly English in his singing accent and subject matter (one of his signature tunes being 1983 single "A New England," later a U.K. hit for Kirsty MacColl.) A revered elder statesman of his genre, Bragg attracts an audience mostly "of a certain age" and hasn't been trendy in decades, but he's more of a treasure than ever for still speaking his mind in an era of voiceless singers. —Paul Rogers