Earnestness is valuable currency in rock at the moment. Whether they are acoustic singer-songwriters, play nu metal or wail bombast in stadiums, rock artists will go to extraordinary lengths to appear as if they "mean it". Slipknot punch each other and urinate on stage. So Solid Crew brandish guns and attack women. Starsailor's James Walsh sings in an anguished yodel that, in less ardent times, would cause most listeners to giggle openly.
The class of 2002 may make a song and dance about it, but nobody can do earnestness quite like Billy Bragg. His tour T-shirts cost more, he explains, because they are made by Nicaraguan workers in non-sweatshop conditions. Between songs, he delivers a series of emotive speeches: against the jubilee, for the Living Wage Campaign, and warning about the dangers of nationalism. All are applauded by an audience he addresses as "brothers and sisters". No artist in rock can so successfully re-create the atmosphere of a mid-1980s GLC-sponsored community festival.
That's not entirely a bad thing. Other artists today may be passionate, but it isn't always clear why; they sound as if they mean it, but you're never quite sure what "it" is. That's not a criticism you could level at Bragg.
In fact, Bragg is curiously bulletproof to criticism. Politics may threaten to overwhelm the world-music-influenced soul-rock hybrid of Bragg and his backing band, but that's probably the point. If a comedian wanted to satirise a political singer-songwriter, they might have him rapping about the benefits of multiculturalism over a jaunty ska track based on a traditional Algerian folk song. Bragg has beaten them to it on the title track from his new album, England, Half English. But the song is so well-intentioned, and preceded live by such an impassioned harangue, that its clodhopping is difficult to censure.
Despite such lapses, it's clear that Bragg has been undervalued as a songwriter over the years. Waiting for the Great Leap Forward and Take Down the Union Jack are wittily provocative, while Valentine's Day Is Over and The Only One are softly affecting love songs. His brothers and sisters in the audience are delighted, yelling their approval when Bragg suggests they hype him to number one during jubilee week. "And don't worry," he adds, lest anyone think rock's most earnest voice has been swayed by a quest for fame. "I'll find a decent workers' charity to give the money to."
· Billy Bragg plays the Warwick Arts Centre, Coventry (024-7652 4524), tonight and the Lowry, Salford (0161-876 2000), tomorrow, then tours.
