Billy Bragg - Live at the Bristol Beacon, 5th December 2023

It seems appropriate that, in a city with such a progressive outlook, the Bard Of Barking is among the first to perform at the Beacon (latterly Colston Hall), a £150m project that will welcome the likes of Paul Weller and Richard Hawley in 2024.

Of course, being the nation’s favourite troubadour, Billy Bragg has previous with the same space, regaling the audience about supporting The Clash in the mid-1980s – one of many stories and anecdotes that pepper the set.

That’s always been Bragg’s style, but seems ever more fitting on this tour, celebrating 40 years since the release of his first album ‘Life’s A Riot with Spy v Spy,’ all 17 minutes of which is played (if not in order) to close the set. The preceding nearly 2 hours are a whistlestop tour of the last 4 decades.

For a political songwriter – which, by definition, should age much of his work – there is a depressing topicality to the material performed tonight, even if some lyrics are updated. Opening with a solemn ‘The Wolf Covers Its Tracks’, lines such as, ‘Jet planes that fly that drop bombs on civilians to even the score. Where’s the God of the children? In the rubble of war’, eerily reference the current atrocities in Gaza.

https://www.live4ever.uk.com/2023/12/review-billy-bragg-bristol-beacon/