Brewing Up with Billy Bragg

Released by Go! Discs on 12 October 1984, it carries the cover subtitle A Puckish Satire on Contemporary Mores, a line from the 1975 Woody Allen film Love and Death. The debut was Bragg and his guitar alone. Here there are subtle overdubs: backing vocals on Love Gets Dangerous, trumpet on The Saturday Boy and organ on A Lover Sings. Kenny Craddock plays the organ and Dave Woodhead the trumpet. Edward de Bono is credited as producer and Kenny Jones as engineer.

The political songs continue. It Says Here is a satirical attack on the British tabloid press, and Island of No Return is a concise anti-war anthem. The album reached 16 on the UK Albums Chart.

Reception and reissues

Danny Kelly of NME wrote that the political songs were more acidly Quixotic than ever while the romantic ones cut even deeper. NME ranked it the sixth-best album of 1984, and in 2000 Q placed it at 87 on its list of the 100 Greatest British Albums Ever.

In 1987 it was collected with Life's a Riot with Spy vs Spy and the Between the Wars EP as Back to Basics. A remastered edition in 2006, by Tim Young and Duncan Cowell, added a second disc with the Between the Wars EP and covers of the Smiths' Back to the Old House, with Johnny Marr on guitar, and the Rolling Stones' The Last Time.