Don't Try This at Home

Released on 16 September 1991, it reached 8 on the UK Albums Chart. Recording ran from October 1990 to July 1991 at several studios, including Pavilion Studios in London and John Keane Studios in Athens, Georgia. Grant Showbiz produced throughout, and Johnny Marr, who co-wrote Sexuality, helped produce three tracks with him. It was recorded in the shadow of the build-up to the Gulf War, which inspired Rumours of War. Bragg called the record a very long-range attempt to convert the ball between the posts.

R.E.M.'s Michael Stipe and Peter Buck contribute to You Woke Up My Neighbourhood, a title taken from a drawing by Woody Guthrie. Cindy of a Thousand Lives is about the photographer Cindy Sherman. Tank Park Salute is about his father, Dennis Bragg, who died of lung cancer when Bragg was 18. Dolphins is a cover of a Fred Neil song, and God's Footballer is about Peter Knowles, who left a football career at Wolverhampton Wanderers to become a Jehovah's Witness. Sexuality was the single.

Reception

It drew positive reviews. David Quantick of NME praised its imagination and wrote that Bragg had shrugged off the demons of despond and made his best album. Select's Michele Kirsch found that he had subverted every pigeonhole he had been bunged into. The commercial push did not lift album sales, and Bragg left Go! Discs the following year. A 2006 reissue added a second disc of demos, B-sides and rarities, including a cover of the Beatles' Revolution.