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At the center of every album is a musical thesis. This thesis can be the driving force behind the album, a theme that interweaves songs together, or a feeling you are left with after the very last song plays. With some albums, the thesis is easy to find. On others, it is hidden and requires you to be more than a passive listener. These reviews are not about rating an album. Instead, it is about uncovering a musical thesis.  

If I fall in love with a band or an artist, I fall deeply in love. Spending time with their discography is never enough. I must listen to side projects and musicians who influenced their work. This musical wormhole can take me to fascinating places. Throughout the journey, I watch as my fascination with this art form expands in all directions.  

I learned of Billy Bragg via the Mermaid Avenue sessions with Wilco. Having spent considerable time with those records, I was hungry to hear more of Mr. Bragg’s work. Unsure of where to start, I picked up Must I Paint You a Picture. This compilation/greatest hits album served as the perfect introduction to a musician who has been at it since the late 1970s.  

Listening to this collection of songs, some themes kept presenting themselves: Self-referential artists, protest, and revolution.  

In the same vein as Woody Guthrie, Pete Seeger, and Bob Dylan, Billy Bragg possesses a unique ability to create protest music that is also engaging. In this collection alone, Between the Wars, There Is Power in a Union, Help Save the Youth of America, and Waiting for the Great Leap Forwards all serve as protest anthems. But they are more than that, because they also feel self-referential. I think this line from Waiting for the Great Leap Forwards is a perfect example.  

Mixing Pop and Politics he asks me what the use is 
I offer him embarrassment and my usual excuses 
While looking down the corridor 
Out to where the van is waiting 
I’m looking for the Great Leap Forwards 

By using this method when singing of revolution, it does not feel as if we are being preached down to behind the safety of some recording booth. Instead, it feels as if the singer is an active participant in the struggle. Lots of musicians use their art to speak about injustice, but it does not always feel as if they are in trenches with us. That does not feel like the case here, and that may be the thesis of this album. When does art meet action?  

Be good to each other,  

Nathan