(Clicka qua per la versione Italiana)
Summary.
Bruce Springsteen is the epitome of
"epic" in music. After Bob Dylan and before the
Ramones, he was one of the few musicians
capable of transforming the mood of an entire generation into a "sound".
If the rules to judge the significance of an artist are that
a) he be indifferent to fads and trends;
b) that his lyrics dig deep into his era and resonate with the souls of millions of people;
c) that each record be, de facto, a concept album;
d) that each song send shivers down the spine even without a catchy melody;
then Springsteen is one of the greatest of all time.
Musically, Springsteen coined the model of the singer-songwriter of the 1980s,
bridging the gap between the bluesman of the 1930s, the black shouter of
the 1940s, the rocker of the 1950s, the folk-singer of the 1960s,
the punk of the 1970s.
In many ways, Springsteen was the true heir to Woody Guthrie (Bob Dylan
never was a true populist).
He sang about the dreams and the fears of ordinary white Americans.
But he was also the heir to the blues, in an era in which
the black nation was abandoning it for dance music.
Over the years, Springsteen grew up to become the eloquent spokesman of
middle-class and blue-collar America. His declamations combine
populist demagogy, patriotic passion and prophetic vision
in a way that is quintessentially American.
The alienated enthusiasm of his early days mutated first into a nostalgic
glorification of the past and eventually into resigned grief.
Dreams turned into memories, and exuberance turned into frustration.
As the promised land faded away, Springsteen led the
exodus from the international utopias to the virtues of ordinary people.
Springsteen conveyed all of this in energetic and intense performances
that changed the whole meaning of the word "concert". His concert is a
collective sacrificial ceremony that pours naked life into artistic form.
Whether shouting or whispering, Springsteen "was" the voice of millions of
American for which the American dream never materialized.
His songs are the national anthems of that submerged nation.
The stylistic fusion of
The Wild The Innocent And The E Street Shuffle (1973),
recalled both Van Morrison and Taj Mahal, while Born To Run (1975)
introduced his torrential "wall of sound".
The River (1980) summed everything up: pathos, epos and eros.
Populist lyrics, granitic group sound, tender confessions, catchy refrains,
hard-rock riffs, massive boogie grooves, rock'n'roll spasms, acoustic ballads:
Springsteen and his band were the ultimate manufacturers of good vibrations.
Sorrow and pessimism prevailed on subsequent albums (on which Springsteen
frequently preferred the acoustic format), with the notable exception of
Born In The USA (1984), another super-charged set of anthemic songs.
(Following is the translation of my old Italian article made by Ford Atwater)
Bruce Springsteen is one of the few rock
musicians who are really worth the word “epic”. After Dylan and before the
Ramones, he was one of the few musicians capable of transforming the mood of an
entire generation into a “sound”.
If the rules to judge a rocker’s significance are
a) that they be indifferent to fads and trends; b) that their lyrics dig deep
into an era and resonate with the souls of millions of people; c) that each
record be, de facto, a concept album; d) that each song send shivers down the
spine even without a catchy melody; then Springsteen is plainly one of the
greatest of all time.
Musically, Springsteen created the
singer-songwriter model of the 80s: bridging the gap between the bluesman of
the 30s, the blacksmith of the 40s, the rocker of the 50s, the folk-singer of
the 60s, and the punk of the 70s.
In many ways, Springsteen was the true heir to
Woody Guthrie (Bob Dylan was never a true populist). But while Guthrie was only
a cultural icon for white America, Springsteen was also an heir to the
apostolic style of blues, at a time when black folks were developing
increasingly progressive dance music. In this way, Springsteen is indeed the
universal singer of the average American (white, black, Latin or otherwise).
Springsteen’s work has developed along three
directives: political (New York Serenade,
Promised Land, Jungleland, State Trooper,
Born in the USA), nostalgic (Glory Days, Going Down, American Graffiti,
all of The River) and erotic (Rosalita, Night, Sherry Darling),
always introspectively exploring the soul of the everyman, and avoiding
messianic proclamations.
As the years went on, Springsteen came to stand
above his peers as an eloquent spokesman of middle-class and blue-collar
America. His declamations combine the populism, passion, and prophetic vision
that has always driven America mad. In many ways, Springsteen is the heir of
the spellbinding preachers and populist politicians that have influenced
America all the way from the frontier to the modern day.
His characters are not heroes, criminals, or
killers: they are ordinary people taken from the assembly line, the repair
shop, or the crowds on the street. They are real people, with their dreams,
their fears, and their complexes. The alienated but enthusiastic vagabonds of Born to Run have aged little by little;
they have become sad and resigned, and now have to deal with the harsh reality
of everyday life and the wrecks of their past dreams, of their “glory days”.
And similarly his prose became more and more literate and existential, until he
became a modern Woody Guthrie: as Guthrie cried the suffering of the rural
population of the Dust Bowl, Springsteen bitterly observes the pain of the
American industrial workers.
Springsteen epitomizes the youth who came of age
in an era of counter-culture and economic prosperity, revitalized by two great
hopes that died miserably on the rocks of the crises and “re-alignment” (or
mere ebb and flow) of the ‘70s. His records simply recorded the slow and sad
transformation of those dreams into memories. The exuberance of school days is
reduced to a deep sense of frustration. Having lost the “promised land”, an
almost biblical exodus from international utopias took them to the virtues of
the man in the street.
The product is an energetic and intense
performer, who in every issue must give everything he has in an inexhaustible
ceremony of sacrifice which has an ultimate end of breaking down life to a
naked and pulsating form. Just as an interpreter, his contribution to the
history of rock is much more salient: everyone now has to compete with his
disruptive and passionate way of maintaining the scene. The populism of Guthrie
and Frank Capra gifted Springsteen with the howl of a whorehouse. If Guthrie
was the intellectual who lives the tragedies of the disinherited from the
outside, and sings of them in a humble and mournful voice, Springsteen is “one
of them” and uses the sound of the slums. And his are the national anthems of
that drowning nation, hymns that, like all hymns, while being simple
four-voiced melodies, make the skin crawl if shouted at the top of the lungs,
and are then worth more than entire symphonies.
Bruce Springsteen (born 1949) grew up in New
Jersey, a stone’s throw from Asbury Park, and mimicked Bob Dylan’s career right
from the start. But he was merely an exuberant rocker, endowed with lyrical
talent and lacking in politics, an urban singer-songwriter who relied on rock
and roll and the rhythm and blues of rural saloons.
Taking vocal cues from Van Morrison (concert
animal par excellence, powerful vocalist, and wise arranger), from “blue-eyed”
soul-rock (Gary U.S. Bonds), and from the romantic tenor of Roy Orbison, on the
first album, Greetings from Asbury Park
(1973), Springsteen effortlessly rattles off Dylan-esque ballads that treat
street life with sincerity (Spirit in the
Night), the sentimental dramas of the petit-bourgeois (For You), and the inner monologues of suburban youth (Growin’ Up).
With the second album, The Wild, the Innocent, & the E Street Shuffle (CBS, 1973),
Springsteen sets out to find an original with a thematically unified collection
of more complex songs that (lyrically) deepen the characters and the narratives
dramatically, and that (musically) mix Stax-soul, Mexican serenades and country
ballads, in a very diverse style of arrangements. Kitty’s Back (jump blues
bands, orchestral swing, blues-jazz solos of organ and guitar) is an example of
this integral fusion. An extended and varied piece, it recalls the pop-jazz of
Moondance and even the pastiche of Colosseum. The Tex-Mex epic with tuba-rhythm
Wild Billy’s Circus Story could have been taken directly from a Taj Mahal
record.
The second side, then, is practically a suite,
themes of youthful fauna that is urban, poor and romantic: Incident on 57th
Street, the fateful tale of a petty thief, has the gait of Desolation Row and a hypnotic procession from Blonde on Blonde; Rosalita,
a novel of love and betrayal, is an exuberant and visceral Van Morrison from
his totally uncritical soul period; and New
York Serenade, which opens on an airy jazz piano solo and is fleshed out by
flamenco chimes and a downpour of strings, is a painful piece of soul chambered
in a darkly apocalyptic atmosphere. These long narrative songs depict the
dark-toned metropolis with a metric and choral structure in Van Morrison’s
creative vein, sustained by an impressive vocal range, from the fiercest roar
to a stifled gasp, and avante-garde arrangements. The quintet that accompanies
it consists of black, white, and Mexican men. What sets it apart from
Morrison’s folk-jazz ensembles are the Chicane inflections, which give the
whole work a more latently Latin connotation.
Springsteen is no longer the troubadour à la
Dylan, but rather the romantic version of Lou Reed, who is also able to immerse
himself body and soul in the noises and images of poor neighborhoods and absorb
them in the raw energy of his sound. His compositions are no longer folk
ballads, but rather those “little symphonies for the kids” that Spector had
theorized.
Born to
Run (CBS, 1975), as the result of a colossal
promotional campaign, of a painstaking production work (a Spectorian “wall of
sound” spice for Blonde on Blonde)
combined with a prime hard rock-soul accompaniment became a bestseller, at the
same time sharpening the virtues/defects of the singer-songwriter, such as
melodrama, emphasis, viscerality “at full volume in one breath” that serve to
mask the paucity of many compositions but which also produce the most powerful
vibrations. The experimentalism of the previous work is abandoned to return to
the classical song form, and the Van Morrison chamber soul is strengthened by
powerful rock and roll syncopation. Springsteen the visceral rocker is not in
reality Springsteen the soul poet, and the two figures do not yet blend
adequately.
Night, a powerful and lyrical serenade in cresdendo, the powerful rock and roll syncopation of She’s the One, the hard-fought urban tale of Backstreets, Born to Run, a solemn and heroic anthem, the dramatic finale of Jungleland,
a snarling, epic and passionate song of life marked by jubilant piano
instrumentation, which is paired with the initial Thunder Road, the overture to the milieu of the lower classes,
combine to form a strongly thematic work, compact, rocky and rabid, a nostalgic
fresco regurgitating characters from suburbia, almost an autobiographical rock
opera, written by Tommy from New England. Bombastic and warlike, Springsteen’s
style has left behind the ascetic tradition of folk singers and has adopted an
attitude halfway between the most heartfelt and tragic operatic tenor, and the
tone of the defiant rocker, more bold and rebellious. To create the
awesomeness, however, is the fresh arrangement again, especially the passionate
and festive saxophone of Clarence Clemons and the twinkling “Christmassy” piano
of Roy Bittan.
In the three years of silence that followed (due
to legal quarrels), the scene was flooded by bootlegs that showcased his live
performances, quickly becoming legendary. Some of these albums are better than
the official ones issued so far, thanks to the furious attacks, vocally and by
guitar, of the leader (a worthy heir to both Hendrix and Burdon) and the
phenomenal support of his E-Street Band, which now counts the rhythm guitar of
Steven Van Zandt among their numbers. Several of his classics come to light
thanks to covers done by others: The
Fever (Southside Johnny), Sandy
(Hollies), Fire (Pointer Sisters), Because The Night (Patti Smith).
Darkness
on the Edge of Town (1978) delivers the official
version of one of his most enthralling rhythm’n’blues songs, Badlands (doubled over by the inferior Prove It All Night), with one of his
best impressions of Bob Dylan on Blonde
on Blonde, The Promised Land, and
the roaring philosophical elegy Adam
Raised a Cain, and makes a decisive transformation by exchanging the
Spectorian embellishments of Born to Run
for the hard, biting sound anticipated by bootlegs, featuring violent bursts of
Clarence Clemons’ saxophone matched with gusty, tempestuous keyboards (piano
and organ), in addition to the guitars of Steven Van Zandt and Springsteen
himself.
Though inferior to the two precedents (some
tracks seem like rejects, others are uncharacteristically subdued), this is the
record that marks the transition to Springsteen’s greatest period: the lyrics
penetrate the everyday life of ordinary folks and transform it into universal
poetry, sanctifying harsh social reality in an atmosphere of quasi-religious
intensity. Springsteen, who up until now had only been the umpteenth romantic
bard of the road, of great dreams and great hopes, becomes the consciousness of
small-town America. This is also the record in which Springsteen begins to
confront the past, which will inspire some of his most intense dramas: by
relying on the power of nostalgia and regret, he adds another layer of pathos
to his people’s fresco.
The classical season of Springsteen originates
from the synthesis between the genuine sound of Born to Run and the philosophical yearning of Darkness. In 1980 he made up for his almost-legendarily
parsimonious discography with the twofold River
(CBS, 1980). It is an album that, musically, now lives solely on the
frightening spirit of the singer and on the ruckus of his band of goons, and,
thematically, repeats for the thousandth time the makeup of the savage rebel,
the lonely hero, the life of the street, in absence of any real lyrical force.
Springsteen, however, is still able to mix
engaging lyrics, longing emotion, and electrifying sound, and many songs, built
upon an avalanche of words and verse, are classics of his blended art. The
entire spectrum is now meaningless, demonstrating how the style of Springsteen
runs parallel to the perpetual motion of rock music. At one end there are the
scarce ascetic ballads from a vagabond in the classical tradition, made more
agonizing by his howling crooning: The
River, bitter parable of so many young people prematurely awakened to life,
Point Blank, Dylanesque ballad of
lament, Independence Day, dripping
with estranged nostalgia, and Stolen Car,
suspended in a ghostly atmosphere. The most emotive are the elegies sung with
that desperate heat that crosses criminal ferocity with the “damned” bravado of
a rocker: Two Hearts, an epic plea
for love, Jackson Cage, a cry for
liberty from a lifelong prisoner, and above all Out In the Street, another frenzied piece of soul that comes
cadenced with shaking fury and screamed like bloody murder.
At the opposite end there are the songs of smooth
self-confidence, Sherry Darling, a
lively serenade that is is the quintessential “Spector sound” (with a
Kooper-style piano, clapping, backing vocals and an impassioned saxophone), or Hungry Heart, a rhythm and blues
nocturne (and his first real hit), or I
Wanna Marry You, a tender and nostalgic ballad of sentimentality, up to the
bewitched triptych of Crush on You, a
ferocious number from the lycanthropic howler at breakneck pace, You Can Look, the rock and roll paroxysm
of his career, and Cadillac Ranch, a
truculent and pressing country boogie, bacchanals of primitive energy that
celebrate the adolescent “fun” of roughhousing good boys in the country. And it
is here that the Spectorian sound reaches its apotheosis, breaking the banks
with unbelievable passion. The more traditional rock, Rocker and Ramrod
(another arrangement masterpiece, a slowed-down rockabilly with a pronounced
organ and red-hot boogie saxophone playing) celebrate his narcissistic macho.
The references to civilization from the fifties is more marked than it seems,
and the music itself is an homage to the past, from folk to the sixties. River is a revivalist record, it is
full of conservative and nostalgic thought.
The three compositions that close out the record,
The Price You Pay, Drive All Night and Wreck on the Highway, are really the most pessimistic: they are
three historical finales, immersed in a sense of profound emptiness, exposing
the end point of all heroes in the Springsteen mythology, similar to how the
ending of “Monsieur Verdoux” (execution by guillotine) reveals where the end of
the long and straight road is for the good-hearted lad in any comedy of
Chaplin’s.
In contrast to the previous records, in which
Springsteen was bard the who sang the lives of exemplary individuals in his
personal Holy Writ, in River the
lyrics are all in first person, and the protagonist is always him, who is being
philosophical and fatalistic in conversation with his girl. Thanks to this
technique his observations have become more profound, succeeding at reaching
into the lives of the characters, as they are bound by their inner monologues.
The keyboards, always in the foreground (church
organs and Farfisa organs of the Jersey shore, music box pianolas and grand
pianos playing chamber music), are equal to the voice in importance in setting
the tone for the songs, and Roy Bittan joins Nicky Hopkins and Al Kooper as one
of the greatest pianists in the rock canon.
Whatever the theme (romance, despair, dreams,
prosecution), the music of the E-Street Band is always compelling and
emotionally close to the spirit of “good times”, though it is never simple
“fun”: this is the secret of the historical compromise reached by Springsteen
over the years. And so, in these heartfelt poems, the most vibrant voice of
blue-eyed rock can carve its notes of daily drama and urban tragedy without
detracting from the pleasure of listening.
River marks the definitive consecration of Springsteen as a folk hero. But two years later Springsteen doubles back and records Nebraska, in the most ascetic style of folk (guitar and harmonica), an homage to his background and an opportunity to redress his vocal chords. His cold street ballads are sung mutedly (Highway Patrolman) with hints of Guthrie, of dust and sweat, of American Graffiti and of the beat generation. Nostalgic
rhetoric propagates stories of history, drama, desolation and jail (Nebraska)
which deviate from the grit and enthusiasm that have marked all previous
endeavors of the hero. The unifying theme is the struggle to survive in the age
of Reaganomics. The most compelling ballads are those (Johnny 99, State
Trooper, and the masterpiece, Open All Night) punctuated by an accentuated
rhythm that puts on a neurotic and hallucinatory air to the moral scenery of
the stories of failure. Nebraska is a sullen and haunting record, which
presents the point of view of the working class, powerless victims of moral
indignities.
For the sake of schizophrenia, 1984 was the year
of commercial boom: the album Born in
the USA (CBS, 1984) won him first place in both the 45 rpm and 33 rpm
charts (18 million copies sold within six years). The album extols both the
virtues and the defects of Springsteen’s conservative rock. Among youthful
reminiscents (the rebellious days of high school) and social obligations
(unemployment, conscription to Vietnam) the newest chapter of the Springsteen
mythos unfolds again with fresh human warmth, pressing electric sound and
desperate fury, which Nebraska’s act
of penitence had obscured, but with a regained great melancholy.
The anthem Born
in the USA (originally composed for Nebraska
in a moving blues version) is an archive of everything bad that has happened to
America in the last decade: its martial chimes appear to call out to the
collective nation of the disowned. All of the tremendous force from the impact
of the Springsteenian epic seems to be put solely at the service of
overwhelming pessimism, so much so that the fastest and most rhythmic songs
(like the rockabilly Working on the
Highway) are the most negative. The pugnacious requiems of Downbound Train, No Surrender, and the captivating Going Down (with an obsessive refrain that makes sense of the
plunge) touch the nadirs of the proletarian epic. Glory Days, the most epic, and at the same time morose, of his
nostalgic reinterpretations of the years of his youth, and the desolate My Hometown recede into his most
authentic vein of regret. The hits, Dancing
in the Dark, Cover Me, and I’m on Fire, conversely do not confirm
Springsteen’s ability to conceal melodic shortcomings with an intense emotional
charge. Pink Cadillac is still the
classic of his genius in blending the rhythm and tone of the three sonic
archetypes: rock’n’roll, rhythm’n’blues and honky-tonk.
Born in
the USA represents the apex of the poetics that has
sprung from the collective memory of America, and which underscores a sense of
guilt for all of the mistakes that Americans have never dared to reflect upon.
Springsteen embodies the other America, opposed to the official one, an America
that does not exalt itself for its grandeur and does not indulge itself in the
intolerant fanaticism of bigots. In fact Springsteen proposes himself as the
last “founding father” of the nation. The bits of wisdom gathered in so many
painful stories compose a morality of humility and resignation before the harsh
reality of existence. His humble and broken people is simply one of many
caravans headed for the frontier, taking many of those lives and leaving the
others to struggle in the sun and the desert.
The quintuple Live of 1986, was immediately thrown to the top of the sales
charts, and consecrating his myth, now without equal, and demonstrates once
more how great he is as an interpreter (for example, War, the old single from Edwin Starr).
Tunnel of
Love (1987), a collection of love songs (which
actually tells the story of his separation from his wife), limits the
rhetorical and paternalistic emphasis and instead gives way to twilit and
autumnal atmospheres. Springsteen tries to form a mould of the gut of the
modern era, not that of decadent Bohemians, and not that of the marginalized
bluesman, nor that of the street rebel, but that of the young petite-bourgeois
and their parallel struggles of illusions and disappointments in life. It is a
corollary to Nebraska, as another
profoundly personal and fundamentally mythological album that has its greatest
moment in Brilliant Disguise (a
typical “baion” song in the tradition of Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller).
Musically, the regressionism that had led him to Spector’s “wall of sound” now
reaches the pop of Brill Building, with reminiscences in the phrasing of Gene
Pitney and the arrangements of Burt Bacharach (even when performed at the
synthesizer, as in Tunnel of Love).
The introspective Springsteen is less striking than the social one, but not
less profound (Spare Parts, One Step Up). Ever changing his style
and theme, Springsteen is unique in the way that he manages to retain his
identity. It takes two seconds to realize that this is the same Springsteen of
the early years. The middle-aged singer-songwriter manages to seamlessly blend
the most intimate experiences of his private life with the most universal
aspects of everyday life. He is one of the few rockers who has rejected the fundamental
motto of rock and roll (“live fast, die young”) and has instead turned rock
into an art of personal growth.
(Original text by Piero Scaruffi)
After disposing of the venerable E Street Band,
Springsteen broke a five-year drought of new material with the
twin albums
Human Touch (Columbia, 1992)
and
Lucky Town (1992).
The former is a collection of old-fashioned pop ballads
that sound more like stylistic experiments
(Soul Driver)
than full-fledged songs. The rock and roll numbers
(Roll Of The Dice, All Or Nothin', Real Man)
suffer from the departure of the E Street Band.
The one notable exception is the spectral gospel of 57 Channels,
with swampy, tribal drums and sinister electronic ambience, one of his
masterpieces.
Lucky Town displays his depressed, pessimistic mood.
It is not a coincidence that it is also his most "bluesy" album ever
(The Big Muddy, Souls of the Departed).
With The Ghost Of Tom Joad (Columbia, dedicated to the protagonist
of John Steinbeck's epic novel, and therefore, indirectly, to the North America
that Woody Guthrie sang,
Springsteen turns again to the desperate endeavors of ordinary Americans.
The problem is that this time around he doesn't have any good song for them,
except for the title-track.
Following the terrorist attack of September 11, 2001, Springsteen began writing
a new collection of songs, which eventually became
The Rising (Columbia, 2002).
The album aimed to be a faithful
reproduction of the mood of middle-class Americans in the wake of that tragedy,
but instead seemed to forgo the sense of loss and focus on rebuilding the
American spirit. It sounds more like a national anthem than a requiem.
Lonesome Day, a bit over-produced with symphonic orchestra
and gospel choir, sets the epic tone (although it sounds more Mellencamp than
Springsteen).
The trivial melody of Waitin' On A Sunny Day (that echoes
Born to Run), and its loud rhythm and blues pace,
or the party rave-up of Mary's Place (so replete with instruments
and voices in the classic River sound),
or the heavy guitar sound and pounding rhythm of Countin' on a Miracle
and Further On hardly belong to a mournful time.
Let's Be Friends is totally gospel, The Fuse is almost trip-hop
The production is not only too intrusive, but also very old-fashioned, dejavu,
involuntarily self-mocking.
Too much sound ruins even the best reportages:
the rousing blues of Into the Fire ("The sky was falling and streaked with blood/ I heard you calling me/ then you disappeared into the dust") and
the solemn prayer of My City of Ruins.
In his attempt to reach out to other cultures, Springsteen is no Peter Gabriel.
The world-music of Worlds Apart sounds cliche` and not very sincere.
The winners are on the opposite front:
the desolate lament of Nothing Man,
the apocalyptic vision of Empty Sky,
the romantic farewell of the dying in Paradise.
Springsteen needs little more than his voice to connect with the soul of
America.
The lyrics read like a summary of tv news, talk shows and interviews with
survivors of the World Trade Center.
The Rising is more a social artifact than a musical one.
The simple, relaxed late-night ballads of Devils & Dust (Sony, 2005),
third of the acoustic
trilogy with Nebraska and The Ghost Of Tom Joad,
marked a significant change in tone.
Springsteen sounds more resigned than compassionate, more contemplative
than angry. His powerful machine of sounds and words is reluctant to charge.
Having lost his historical role as the soul of the American working class,
Springsteen sounds a bit erratic. At times, he speaks (for the first time)
as a spiritual person tormented by the thoughts of redemption and salvation,
making the most of the
historically incorrect Jesus Was an Only Son (Jesus did have brothers).
At times, he toys with the theme of "homecoming" without quite confronting it
from the nostalgic or romantic angle.
Clearly, the heroic phase is over. The new phase is still a strange limbo of
brooding emotions where history and heart still have to find a common ground.
Mary's Place, Reno and Matamoros Banks are perhaps the
best manifestations of this transitional art.
Compared with the previous albums, Magic (2007) is a relatively
relaxed and homely affair. It is also meticulously arranged, giving he music
more relevance than the lyrics.
Springsteen employs the E Street Band
(backup vocalist Patti Scialfa, guitarists Steve Van Zandt and Nils Lofgren, saxophonist Clarence Clemons, pianist Roy Bittan, drummer Max Weinberg)
to sing and play simple songs that do not attempt to construct an epic concept
or a doleful tragedy. They are just the songs that he had ready.
Some of them dangerously lean towards the pop-muzak sentimental end of the
spectrum, such as Devil's Arcade and Your Own Worst Enemy,
songs that are hijacked by baroque harpsichords, violins and timpani.
Others, luckily, echo the Born To Run wall of sound:
the anthemic Radio Nowhere with pounding drums and stentorian hard-rock
riff (but reminiscent of Tommy Tutone's 867-5309),
the vibrant jangling folk-rock lament Gypsy Biker
(with echoes of Bob Dylan and Tom Petty),
the solemn and fatalistic aria I'll Work For You Love (possibly the best melody),
the nostalgic, Phil Spector-ian singalong Girls in Their Summer Clothes,
and the slow syncopated rhythm'n'blues shout Livin' in the Future.
The melancholy bard of small-town America intones the triptych of
Magic (an anemic elegy sung in the voice of an old man against velvety orchestral touches),
Last To Die (a powerful hymn over melodramatic guitar chords) and
the pulsating heroic Long Walk Home, the ideological pillar of the album.
The album marked a return to the angry passionate populist bard of
Born In The USA.
Continuing the pattern of the last two albums,
Working On A Dream (Columbia, 2009), featuring the E Street Band again,
is another spirited run through the canon of Springsteen's classic style.
The album opens in a mood of renewal with
the Western-tinged eight-minute epic Outlaw Pete,
ssomething that Stan Ridgway could have done.
His passionate and forceful rhythm'n'blues numbers (My Lucky Day)
and his solemn elegies
(Queen of the Supermarket, actually a sarcastic parody a` la Frank Zappa) that sounds like Jim Steinman orchestrating a hit of country music,
Kingdom Of Days)
are sprinkled parsimoniously around the album.
Whether intended or not, the bulk of the album is instead a nostalgic tribute
to the music of Springsteen's childhood:
Surprise Surprise is a jangling Byrds-ian
(with the most memorable melody of the album),
Working On A Dream harks back to the vocal harmonies of the 1950s,
This Life contains echoes of easy-listening melodies of the 1960s,
Tomorrow Never Knows is a breeze folkish singalong,
and Good Eye is a bar-band blues stomp.
All in all, it's probably the most confused and ambiguous of his collections,
with some truly awful material.
The Promise (2010)
collects leftovers from the sessions of
Darkness On The Edge Of Town, including
his own version of Because The Night.
Some of the songs beat most of what Springsteen did in the 2000s
(Outside Looking In,
Wrong Side Of The Street), others belong to the genre of the
lukewarm ballad that has always been a mixed blessing
(Racing in the Street, Ain't Good Enough For You).
Only Springsteen, the unstoppable and unbribable bard of the everyman, could
acutely link the Great Recession of the late 2000s with the
Great Depression of the 1930s, as he did on
Wrecking Ball (Columbia, 2012). His populist tones, adapted to
the epos of The Rising, bestowed a transcendent meaning on
We Take Care of Our Own,
Jack of All Trades,
Wrecking Ball and the
seven-minute Land of Hope and Dreams (originally written in 1999).
The depression folk-singer nonetheless acknowledge the age of loops and samples
(notably in Rocky Ground).
The drawback was that the music flowed slow and ponderous. The
Irish-tinged Shackled And Drawn, and the
country singalong We Are Alive (a dead ringer for the perennial anthem Ring of Fire)
are a case of too little too late.
High Hopes (2014) collects leftovers,
the live staple American Skin,
a reworking of his own
The Ghost Of Tom Joad and three covers
(including Just Like Fire by Australian punks the Saints and Dream Baby Dream by Suicide).
Western Stars (2019) is a mediocre album of (mostly)
orchestral country ballads, save the stripped-down lament of Hitchhiker,
The crooner/narrator of There Goes My Miracle, Tucson Train and Western Stars has none of the energy, rage and passion of Bruce Springsteen.
Letter to You (2020) completed the descent into nostalgic mode, coming
after his memoir of 2016
and after the Broadway show of 2017,
and at the same time as
Thom Zimny's documentary "Letter to You" (2020).
Backed by the E Street Band (which, besides being older, lost
Danny Federici and Clarence Clemons, both deceased),
Springsteen recycles
old (unreleased) songs like Janey Needs a Shooter (with gospel organ and blues harmonica),
and crafts stereotypical blue-collar ballads like
Ghosts (with the riff of Tom Petty's Free Fallin')
and I'll See You in My Dreams (which sounds like Dylan),
before ending with the noble Last Man Standing.
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