Review: Billy Bragg, Bristol Beacon – ‘A huge celebration’

“You have a lovely room here” says Billy Bragg, “look after it”, and so ends the second “proper” night at the all new, all singing, all dancing Bristol Beacon.

It might have cost a couple more quid than originally planned, but Bragg is absolutely right, it is a lovely room. It feels beautifully spacious, sounds incredible and looks glorious.

There are new bits and improved old bits, bits that have been tweaked and bits that have been entirely remodelled. Bristol has, at long last, got the seated concert hall that it deserves.

There’s something very fitting about Billy Bragg playing here on week one of this new place. Half way through his set celebrating 40 years since the release of his debut album he sings Mid Century Modern, a track taken from his most recent studio album, The Million Things That Never Happened.

He talks of thanking “the kids who pull the statues down” who help him see “gap between the man I am and the man I want to be”.

He’s still just as politically aware as ever, still fuming with righteous indignation, still on the right side of history. He’s also aware of the fine lines he sometimes treads.

On Sexuality he changes the lyrics to reflect his ally-ship of trans people, a savagely, raggedly punky All You Fascists Are Bound to Lose is delivered with a well-deserved swipe at Suella Braverman.

Each target is carefully lined up before being expertly skewered, each vote of support considered and roundly defended. Bragg is never anything but open and honest.

This latest tour is in support of Roaring Forty, his career spanning best of, and the whole night is an unashamed celebration of the best loved corners of Bragg-world.

Way Over Yonder in a Minor Key is mandolin-drenched (thanks to the extraordinary CJ Hillman), country tinged and brilliant while She’s Got a New Spell makes grown men go a little weak on the inside – “ah, you soppy lot” smiles Bragg.

By now, of course, Bragg has a setlist of guaranteed crowd pleasers. It just wouldn’t be right if he didn’t allow us to sing along to Greetings to the New Brunette, There is Power in a Union, Waiting for the Great Leap Forward or Levi Stubbs’ Tears. So, he does, and we do.

The perfect acoustics of the Beacon allow the howls of affirmation to ring loud and true.

It is, however, on a couple of the gentler songs that Bragg’s back catalogue gems glitter.

Tank Park Salute, from 1991’s Don’t Try This at Home, is just as poignant as ever. It’s lost none of its beauty, none of its heartfelt honesty in the intervening years.

Just Bragg, a guitar and JJ Stoney on twinkling keys, it’s delightful.

I Will Be Your Shield is pretty new, having been written during the pandemic. It dispenses with the rabble rousing and the packet line hectoring and is, instead, a moment of velvet-y richness.

It’s been mentioned many times before, but Bragg’s voice has taken on a luxurious hue in his 65th year, he has never sounded as good as this.

All of which just leaves a heads-down dash through the entirety of Life’s a Riot with Spy vs Spy, that debut solo release from 40 years ago. At 17 minutes, it’s a long encore but a very short album. It is also the perfect way to end this joyous celebration.

Milkman of Human Kindness is, largely, left to the Beacon to sing, as is To Have and to Have Not. By the time he starts New England, the expensive looking new seats have been tipped back and the whole place is on its feet.

In this renamed “lovely room”, a vital, political voice reminds us why we had to tear those statues down. A huge celebration of favourite old bits and beautiful new ones.

Main photo: Gavin McNamara

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