Bruce Springsteen: The Promise

BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN: THE PROMISE (1977-1978/2010)

1) Racing In The Street; 2) Gotta Get That Feeling; 3) Outside Looking In; 4) Someday; 5) One Way Street; 6) Be­cause The Night; 7) Wrong Side Of The Street; 8) The Brokenhearted; 9) Rendezvous; 10) Candy's Boy; 11) Save My Love; 12) Ain't Good Enough For You; 13) Fire; 14) Spanish Eyes; 15) It's A Shame; 16) Come On (Let's Go Tonight); 17) Talk To Me; 18) The Little Things (My Baby Does); 19) Breakaway; 20) The Promise; 21) City Of Night.

And the rains keep falling and falling, and now we learn — those of us, that is, who have not been avid bootleg collectors over the years — that in compiling Tracks, Springsteen intentionally sidetracked one particular period in his history, the «murky years» in between Born To Run and Darkness On The Edge Of Town when he was busy fighting his former manager and waiting for the ban on his new records to be lifted. Indeed, of these new songs only ʽRendezvousʼ was formerly available on Tracks, and even there, only in a live version.

The wonderful thing about The Promise, for hardcore fans at least, is that it plays out like a co­hesive, even conceptual, double album — The Great Lost Springsteen Album; yes, a few of the songs would later be reworked for Darkness, but they'd change significantly in the process. The not-so-wonderful thing is that his first official double album, The River, had already shown the excessive simplicity and repetitiveness of the new churn formula; and The Promise, had it been released to the general public in 1977 or 1978, would have been his first The River, albeit a little less exciting and more predictable than the 1980 album.

Just like the material on Tracks, these songs are decent and nothing more. What distinguishes them is that, oddly enough, The Promise is really just one big huge enormous tribute to the music of Bruce's teenage years — early rock'n'roll, Motown, R&B, Phil Spector's wall-of-sound, whatever. We know he'd returned to those inspirations in 1980 and then, occasionally, on later albums as well, but never did they seem to be so consistently and naggingly on his mind than in those «murky years». Perhaps he sought consolation from all his troubles in the music of the Ro­nettes, the Crystals, the Supremes, Ben E. King, and Buddy Holly, or maybe he thought that, since he'd already been branded «the saviour of rock'n'roll» and stuff, he'd really have to go back to his roots and save the goddamn son of a bitch a second time, this time for real. Who really knows? The thing is, say a big thank you to Mike Appel, who effectively kept this from beco­ming the disappointing sequel to Born To Run at the time and whose activity ultimately boxed the Boss into a much darker, and psychologically deeper corner.

Perhaps if you listen to this album in «fresh» mode, taking a long, long break from Bruce-lore, the songs will find a way to appeal to you on song-individual level. My problem here is that I find myself in a position to write about The Promise as a conclusion to a lengthy chronological run, and each of these chords, tones, words is as familiar to me now as the wallpaper staring me in the face. And I will harshly state that this is Bruce's problem, not mine — we are not guilty, after all, that ever since the man locked in on national and international fame, he'd become such a fabu­lously lazy songwriter, mostly exploiting familiar chord sequences and making them his own by putting them on a steady Springsteroid diet.

There is nothing inherently wrong, of course, in putting your own unique stamp on music that you have so openly derived from Phil Spector or Buddy Holly. Problems begin when you overdo it, and The Promise overdoes it with gusto: song after song, you have exactly the same vibe, and remember, back in the Sixties, you had this stuff in single format, or, at best, in relatively brief 30-to-40 minute LP format. Here, you have an hour and a half of Buddy Holly with Springsteen vocals (ʽOutside Looking Inʼ), the Ronettes with Springsteen vocals (ʽSomedayʼ), Mary Wells with Springsteen vocals (ʽOne Way Streetʼ), Roy Orbison with Springsteen vocals (ʽThe Broken­heartedʼ), the Supremes with Springsteen vocals (ʽAin't Good Enough For Youʼ — okay, actual­ly I must admit this is the best song the Supremes never got to sing, the piano melody is so infec­tious), Elvis with Springsteen vocals (ʽFireʼ), Solomon Burke with Springsteen vocals (ʽSpanish Eyesʼ)... need I go on?

Had he had the opportunity to put it out in the old days, it might actually have been clipped and compacted into a shorter, more easily assimilated record (and he'd also patented the concept way before Billy Joel's An Innocent Man, although Billy's retro-tribute probably had more contras­tive impact in the synth-pop days of 1983 than Bruce's would have had in 1977). But then we should also remember that in 1978, once his legal troubles were over, nobody could prevent him from releasing or at least re-recording these tracks — the fact that he chose not to do that, and came out with the much more original (and meaningful) Darkness instead shows that he was probably looking back on this stuff, already then, as a trifling business.

You can still hear shades and echoes of The Promise on Darkness — for instance, the lyrical connection between ʽRa­cing In The Streetʼ (also included here in an early version) and ʽDancing In The Streetsʼ becomes much more clear, since worship of Martha & The Vandellas is a totally integral part of this album; also, ʽFactoryʼ is explained as a lyrical re-write of the much more lightweight ʽCome On (Let's Go Tonight)ʼ. But there is almost nothing of Darkness on The Pro­mise — aside from maybe the title track itself, whose first lines already suggest the whole lyrical trajectory ("Johnny works in a factory / Billy works downtown..." — kids in middle school should be given this couple of lines as part of the regular «Write your own Bruce Springsteen song!» assignment) and whose refrain makes it a logical pessimistic sequel to ʽThunder Roadʼ. However, it comes in so late in the evening that it changes nothing about the general perspective on the record as a whole.

Still, despite all the criticism, it is probably a good thing that Bruce eventually got around to clea­ning up this particular shelf. After all, these are not raw demos or anything — it is a coherent, self-sufficient piece of product; it nicely plugs in the odd three-year gap in what still remains Springsteen's most creative and important decade of all; it is an undeniably generous gift to the fans; and I'm even sure it will be perfectly listenable and enjoyable for me in the future, once the «Springsteen overdose» effect wears off. One thing, however: this polished version of ʽBecause The Nightʼ still leaves me convinced that Bruce made the perfectly right decision when he dona­ted the song to Patti Smith. He sounds pathetically constipated on these verses — I don't know, maybe there's something in them that only makes it right for female voices. Or for demon-haunted avantgarde convention-defying crazy feminist voices, for that matter.

Bruce Springsteen: Tracks

BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN: TRACKS (1972-1995/1998)

CD I: 1) Mary Queen Of Arkansas; 2) It's Hard To Be A Saint In The City; 3) Growin' Up; 4) Does This Bus Stop At 82nd Street?; 5) Bishop Danced; 6) Santa Ana; 7) Seaside Bar Song; 8) Zero And Blind Terry; 9) Linda Let Me Be The One; 10) Thundercrack; 11) Rendezvous; 12) Give The Girl A Kiss; 13) Iceman; 14) Bring On The Night; 15) So Young And In Love; 16) Hearts Of Stone; 17) Don't Look Back.

CD II: 1) Restless Nights; 2) A Good Man Is Hard To Find (Pittsburgh); 3) Roulette; 4) Dollhouse; 5) Where The Bands Are; 6) Loose Ends; 7) Living On The Edge Of The World; 8) Wages Of Sin; 9) Take 'Em As They Come; 10) Be True; 11) Ricky Wants A Man Of Her Own; 12) I Wanna Be With You; 13) Mary Lou; 14) Stolen Car; 15) Born In The U.S.A.; 16) Johnny Bye-Bye; 17) Shut Out The Light.

CD III: 1) Cynthia; 2) My Love Will Not Let You Down; 3) This Hard Land; 4) Frankie; 5) TV Movie; 6) Stand On It; 7) Lion's Den; 8) Car Wash; 9) Rockaway The Days; 10) Brothers Under The Bridges ('83); 11) Man At The Top; 12) Pink Cadillac; 13) Two For The Road; 14) Janey Don't You Lose Heart; 15) When You Need Me; 16) The Wish; 17) The Honeymooners; 18) Lucky Man.

CD IV: 1) Leavin' Train; 2) Seven Angels; 3) Gave It A Name; 4) Sad Eyes; 5) My Lover Man; 6) Over The Rise; 7) When The Lights Go Out; 8) Loose Change; 9) Trouble In Paradise; 10) Happy; 11) Part Man, Part Monkey; 12) Goin' Cali; 13) Back In Your Arms; 14) Brothers Under The Bridge.

Ohgodohgodohgod, how am I ever gonna do this. Okay, let's put it into personal perspective: I write a new review almost every day, and never ever would I want to defend each and every one of these texts as «insightful», «original», or even properly written (let alone the fact that I never have much time for proofreading). Even if all the records I was writing about were dazzlingly original and adventurous, I'd still end up repeating myself, falling back on stock phrases, under­whelmed on bad days, and overhyped on good days. It is a routine process, after all, and routine eats away inspiration and insight like a termite infestation.

Tracks, a monster 4-CD boxset of (mostly) previously unissued material that Bruce prepared in the late 1990s, may be a coveted treasure house for fans — but to me, it shows, first and foremost, that for Bruce, the art of «songwriting», too, was a very routine process. Of course, it's not as if he came up with a new song every day of his life, but during numerous periods in his life, he generated them with the speed of a well-written spammer script; and the sheer number of these tunes that had to be locked in the vaults, biding their time, shows that the «Springsteen formula», which we really saw originate on Darkness On The Edge Of Town and reach sexual maturity on The River, actually worked with twice, if not thrice, the efficiency that we could suspect by listening to the officially released stuff.

If you were ever worried about all that generic filler on The River; if you were ever troubled about the formulaic, simplistic approach to melodies and arrangements on Born In The USA; if you ever felt like The Boss was dumbing down and/or copy-pasting the hooks on Tunnel Of Love or Human Touch — all of your worries, troubles, and suspicions will be fully confirmed with this 60+ item set of second-hand tunes. It is instructive that out of 4 discs, 1 is given up al­most entirely to outtakes from The River, 1 consists of leftovers from Born In The USA and Tunnel Of Love, and 1 is allocated to the Human Touch/Lucky Town period — which leaves only one disc to all of the Seventies, a decade when Bruce's «gigantomania» extended not just to the big sound of The E Street Band, but also covered the fields of lyrics (which were more com­plex), melodies (which were more jazzy and experimental), and song structures (which used to have fare more intros, codas, and internal development than any of his post-1978 stuff).

It is also precisely on that one disc, as soon as you pass a bunch of forgettable (historical interest only) early acoustic demos of well-known songs, that you get to encounter the best and least ob­vious material — compositions over which you can actually lament that they were taken off the respective albums for space reasons (although nowadays, with the CD format, there's always room for them if they ever want to come back). The most obvious highlight is ʽThundercrackʼ, an eight-minute epic that was probably cut from The Wild in favor of ʽRosalitaʼ, another long and even more exuberant track admiring a lady's charms, but even though ʽRosalitaʼ is faster, rowdier, and would always constitute a better turn-on for concert audiences, ʽThundercrackʼ may actually be its musical superior — especially when the band gets to the lengthy instrumental passage and starts cracking out terrific lead riffs, one after another, with occasional support from Clarence's ever-helping sax. There's some delicate subtlety and exquisite romance in this song that very rarely cropped up in Bruce's songs even in the early days, and then disappeared forever once he made the complete transition to arena-rock mode.

A much less popular, but very unusual and offbeat inclusion from those days is ʽBishop Dancedʼ, a rough-rugged folk-dance tune driven by acoustic guitar and accordeon and slightly reminiscent of The Band — the recording is live, taken from an early 1973 show at Max's Kansas City, and, judging by the audience's lively response, stuff like this could excite small crowds just as strong­ly as ʽBorn To Runʼ would later excite large crowds. Well, maybe not quite, but still — it's fun seeing him stringing together these off-the-wall lines of chaotic imagery, still very much influen­ced by Dylan but also still trying to experiment with musical form, putting his own stamp on the folk dance genre, way before turning into the predictable «working class champion».

That said, even for those early days you can easily see why stuff like ʽSanta Anaʼ or ʽZero And Blind Terryʼ were left off the final product — they're okay, but they add nothing extra to the moods and vibes that are already there. And as time goes by, these «superfluous» tunes become more and more the norm — for just about any track here past ʽThundercrackʼ you can pinpoint one or two officially released songs that said all the same things and more, or better. Do believe me when I insist that you will not discover any hidden sides of The Boss by listening to these songs, even if I also have to admit that there are almost no stylistic embarrassments or openly bad / dumb material included (well, maybe "Ricky's almost grown, Ricky wants a man of her own" comes close to dumb, but it's really just one of those Fifties-imitating nostalgic teen-pop numbers that he really had a crush on in 1980).

The relative consistency of these songs facilitates the listening process — I sat through the entire hog twice, which would be a real chore for most 4-CD collections of outtakes, but this one went surprisingly easy — however, I just don't feel like talking about the songs: whatever I'd have to say was already probably said in conjunction with some other song. To fill space, here are just some random observations: (A) I don't mind that ʽSo Young And In Loveʼ borrows the intro from ʽLawdy Miss Clawdyʼ, but how come ʽGive The Girl A Kissʼ is so blatantly influenced by Fleet­wood Mac's ʽDon't Stopʼ? The intro and outro are simply lifted from that song, almost as if the man had a subconscious desire for some of that Rumours gold to rub off on himself; (B) the Ne­braska-era acoustic demo of ʽBorn In The USAʼ has a vibe amusingly similar to ʽState Trooperʼ and is so totally tragically paranoid that one can only think how hilarious it would have been if Reagan's advisors got the man to consent to lend them the song — in this version; (C) ʽMy Love Will Not Let You Downʼ was one rejected song from the Born In The USA sessions that Bruce actually salvaged for his concerts, and although here it sports the ugly dated early Eighties synth sound, it is still gloriously anthemic and somewhat exceptional; (D) ʽFrankieʼ is a weird 7-minute long epic that I would have never guessed was also a Born In The USA outtake — it's a winding epic tale of Born To Run proportions (perhaps Bruce reminded himself in time that it was too melodically similar to ʽThunder Roadʼ), though, again, not vastly original.

And that's pretty much it. I would find any attempts to pick «bad» and «good» songs here so subjective and depending on such thin nuances that I'd much rather discuss angels dancing on the head of a pin. Clearly, this is first and foremost «for the fans»; Dylan's Bootleg Series, whose popularity may have inspired Bruce to follow suit, at least had a small bunch of major lost gems on each of its discs, whereas Tracks is far more evenly «mediocre» (people often complain about the last disc or the last two discs being inferior to the rest, but these are people who like to ima­gine a huge qualitative gap between Born To Run and Born In The USA — I am not so sure it was that huge in the first place), and simply offers «more of the same» for those who'd like to have more of the same. But it ends up putting the reviewer in a bad position, and I don't want to be one of those guys who can exude the same glowing intonations for a bunch of outtakes as they can for a genuine paradigm-shifting masterpiece.

Bottomline: I genuinely enjoyed listening to this, but no spiritual revelations ever manifested — and that is even if we define «spiritual revelation» in the broadest possible sense, like including frenetically banging my head against the wall to the bulgy sound of ʽCadillac Ranchʼ. Didn't really find no ʽCadillac Ranchesʼ here, either.

Bruce Springsteen: Hammersmith Odeon, London '75

BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN: HAMMERSMITH ODEON, LONDON '75 (1975/2006)

1) Thunder Road; 2) Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out; 3) Spirit In The Night; 4) Lost In The Flood; 5) She's The One; 6) Born To Run; 7) The E Street Shuffle; 8) It's Hard To Be A Saint In The City; 9) Backstreets; 10) Kitty's Back; 11) Jungleland; 12) Rosalita (Come Out Tonight); 13) 4th Of July, Asbury Park (Sandy); 14) Detroit Medley; 15) For You; 16) Quarter To Three.

Although you could theoretically apply the tag «archival release» to Live 1975-85 as well, or at least parts of it, that sprawling monster was a mish-mash retrospective, joining the past with the present, and not really part of the «vault-emptying drive» that began with Dylan and truly caught up with the majority of classic rockers at the turn of the millennium. Having successfully entered the game with Tracks, what Bruce really needed at this point was a bona fide recording of a com­plete, unaltered performance from the glory days — and hardly a better choice could have been made than this show from November 18, 1975, Bruce's first ever gig across the ocean in which he managed to conquer the somewhat skeptical British audiences in one two-hour long shot.

The recording, made available in both CD and DVD format, as some cameramen were fortunate enough to capture the young Boss in all of his bearded, hat-wearing, proto-indie-rock glory, has tremendous historical importance — although Born To Run was already climbing up the charts and critics were already outgushing each other, this is still Bruce Springsteen in his «pre-super­star» days, when all the now-classic material was still fresh and vibrant, and he got to perform ʽBorn To Runʼ not because, you know, what's a Boss show without ʽBorn To Runʼ? but simply because he'd only just written it and meant every word and every note of it. This is that particular era where the man had to work hard, and though nobody can accuse Bruce of not having worked hard enough even after the world was his for the taking, there are different kinds of hard out there, and this is one of these shows that actually caused people like Landau to go nuts, so...

In terms of surprises, there's not a lot of them, though people unfamiliar with the man's mid-Se­venties routine might find it amusing to hear Bruce insert so many strains of his various influen­ces into the songs: Sam Cooke, Little Richard, Van Morrison, Isaac Hayes, and even Gary U. S. Bonds are all channelled, either by themselves, or as threads interwoven into the man's own com­positions. Not that these bits are in any way the best parts of the show — as good as Bruce is at setting fire to his own songs, he is usually awful when covering other people, because he's really only got one mode of functioning (Boss mode!) and he always converts everything to that mode, no matter how much he might like and respect the originals. Was that really a piece of Sam Cooke's ʽHavin' A Partyʼ at the end of ʽThe E Street Shuffleʼ? Did he really lead ʽKitty's Backʼ into Van Morrison's ʽMoondanceʼ at one point? Oh, I'm sorry, I thought that was just some ran­dom small twist in the arrangement.

This is why the most easily skippable part of the album is the so-called ʽDetroit Medleyʼ, where Bruce mashes together some Shorty Long and Little Richard tunes with seemingly no other pur­pose than demonstrating his Rock And Roll Credentials, or else people might want to think of him as a jazz-pop artist or something. Not that the E Street Band couldn't carry a proper rock and roll tune — on the contrary, they just try way too hard, and yet it still feels that this isn't the kind of music that comes naturally to them. One catch is that Springsteen has always had a poor sense of humor, and for basic rock'n'roll humor is essential — he's singing ʽGood Golly Miss Mollyʼ as if he were pounding it with a wrecking ball or something, with his pay depending on how many small bits and splinters he could produce: energetic, powerful, and deadly serious. Okay, Cap'n, we got it, just stop it right there, please? The poor girl can't take any more of this.

For his own stuff, though, this approach is naturally the perfect one, and the performance is gene­rally stellar, with relatively little in the way of storytelling to prevent Bruce from setting up Fort New Jersey in what used to be Gaumont Palace. The songs are not too different from the studio counterparts, except for maybe ʽE Street Shuffleʼ, which is much countrified from its funky ori­gins and features an extended slide guitar solo that might remind you of the Allman Brothers, al­though the sprawling, messy nature of the tune on the whole shows more of a Van Morrison in­fluence (no wonder ʽMoondanceʼ is quoted, albeit inside another song); and the opening ʽThun­der Roadʼ which, as was typical for Bruce at the time, is performed in its stripped-down version, with keyboards and harmonica bearing the brunt of the melody.

But, of course, you don't need me or anyone else to tell you that this here stuff is all about youth­ful exuberance and total conviction, rather than about making the live audiences witness some­thing they could never encounter on the studio record. In terms of sheer intensity, these versions might really blow some of the originals out of the water — if you prefer the man's full-throttle roar to the inevitably slightly more subdued, controlled singing in the studio — and let us not forget that The E Street Band on stage takes pride in being even tighter and more focused than when contributing overdubs to studio tapes. Me not being the major Springsteen fan on the block, the originals are not that well ingrained in the brain to allow for astute nuance-spotting compa­risons with this show — but, heck, even I have to admit it was one hell of a show.

It probably makes more sense to just watch the video, though, which (at least in the original re­lease) came packaged together with the CDs (in fact, the video was released even earlier, on the 35th anniversary edition of Born To Run) — the image quality is not much to speak of, but at least it is professional, and it really is fun to see The Boss working hard to earn that title, rather than just keep on confirming it. The beard! The hat! No muscles! Little Stevie still years away from his Baba Yaga image! How could this not be a thumbs up?

Bruce Springsteen: High Hopes

BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN: HIGH HOPES (2014)

1) High Hopes; 2) Harry's Place; 3) American Skin (41 Shots); 4) Just Like Fire Would; 5) Down In The Hole; 6) Heaven's Wall; 7) Frankie Fell In Love; 8) This Is Your Sword; 9) Hunter Of Invisible Game; 10) The Ghost Of Tom Joad; 11) The Wall; 12) Dream Baby Dream.

I guess it's a big help for us all to see the ol' Boss still asserting his masculinity with such confi­dent posture on the cover of his nine billionth studio album, but wait ten more years and people will start mixing him up with Clint Eastwood, and then where will we be? Another question is whether a brand new album from the Boss is really necessary, when we have not yet completed our disappointment ritual with Wrecking Ball? Why does he refuse to come to terms with the fact that millions of fans all over the world just want to hear ʽBorn In The USAʼ and ʽBorn To Runʼ, because they don't have time to learn all those new words?

Actually, High Hopes is a bit of a cop-out. On most of his previous albums, Bruce had freely re­sorted to resuscitating some of his outtakes and older raw ideas, but High Hopes is the first one in a long time, if not ever, to consist almost exclusively of outtakes and old ideas — even a casual fan like me immediately recognizes ʽAmerican Skin (41 Shots)ʼ, which was played as early as the Live In New York City tour, and, of course, ʽThe Ghost Of Tom Joadʼ is not just a re-recording of the old title track from that one LP, but a studio take on a live electric version with Tom Mo­rello that Bruce had also been playing since God knows when (I know I first saw it on the Rock'n'Roll Hall Of Fame 25th Anniversary Concert in 2009 and was duly impressed with Mo­rello's fireworks, and here you have them all over again). Information on the provenance of the other songs is easy to come by as well, but we shall not dwell too much on trivia here.

Instead, the good news is that, for all of its mixed nature, High Hopes somehow ends up being more interesting and involving than Wrecking Ball — maybe precisely because the man had no single, obsessive, and poorly executed concept here, but simply rounded up a bunch of isolated good ideas and left them for us to piece together. There's some of that traditional Seeger-inspired folk rock here, some typical old school Springsteen epics, and some really odd stuff, like the title track, which was originally written and recorded by the obscure artist Tim Scott McConnell, a.k.a. «Ledfoot», the self-proclaimed creator of the «Gothic blues» genre; actually, Bruce recorded his first version of the song as early as 1996, but this is a totally reinvented version, with Morello's pyrotechnics and a crazed-out Latin brass rhythm section turning the tune into a tribal dance round the fire (funny enough, the drum intro almost tricks you into thinking that the band is all but ready to launch into Led Zeppelin's ʽRock'n'Rollʼ — probably an accident, though).

The songs, as usual, are relatively simple and often tremendously repetitive, which is excusable on folk stylizations like ʽDream Baby Dreamʼ (a cover of Suicide!) but a little irritating on the originals like ʽHeaven's Wallʼ. Nevertheless, there are some good hooks, including orchestral ones — ʽHunter Of Invisible Gameʼ is a generic folk ballad in form, but well redeemed by the orchestral line that pierces the song throughout and essentially plays the same role that the Char­lie McCoy guitar flourish plays on ʽDesolation Rowʼ. And some good lyrics, too: ʽThe Wallʼ is a genuinely moving tribute to Vietnam vets, not even so much because of the lyrical trumpet part, but because the words are so well put together: "Apology and forgiveness got no place here at all, here at the wall". Then again... he wrote this circa 1998, back when the old imagery bag still had some good stuff tucked away at the bottom.

The strange alliance with Tom Morello actually works out well for the album: not only does the man add his flashy, indulgent, but oddly efficient guitar fireworks to several of the songs, but he was also the motivator behind Bruce's unpredictable choice of covers — not that ʽJust Like Fire Wouldʼ and ʽDream Baby Dreamʼ are such great songs per se, you understand, but the idea of Bruce Springsteen covering The Saints and Suicide, if only to acquaint the general public with these bands' existence, is endearing, and doubly endearing, perhaps, if we remember that this is being done in 2014, by which time no layman is supposed to remember anybody but Michael Jack­son and Madonna from that decade. This is at the same time a «retro» move for the man, and a bold leap forward — let's have high hopes for a Captain Beefheart cover next time around.

Without much of anything else to say, I would just like to let this go with a thumbs up. By its very nature, High Hopes, comprised as it is of odds and ends, could not be a «great» Springsteen album. But at this time, I'd rather have a «simply good» Springsteen album that does not strive for much rather than a «would-be great failure» like Wrecking Ball, which struggles to ensnare you with its Grand Message, but falls flat compared to all those early Grand Messages. Some hooks, some decent lyrics, some diversity, a bit of weirdness... no, really, can't complain. Perhaps it was a good idea to let all those songs stew for a decade or more — sometimes it does not work (like with the weak version of ʽLand Of Hope And Dreamsʼ on Wrecking Ball), but here, these particular studio sessions caught the Boss in an invigorated mood, and even ʽAmerican Skinʼ sounds every bit as punchy as its live counterparts.

Bruce Springsteen: Wrecking Ball

BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN: WRECKING BALL (2012)

1) We Take Care Of Our Own; 2) Easy Money; 3) Shackled And Drawn; 4) Jack Of All Trades; 5) Death To My Hometown; 6) This Depression; 7) Wrecking Ball; 8) You've Got It; 9) Rocky Ground; 10) Land Of Hope And Dreams; 11) We Are Alive.

Okay, so at least the surprisingly elevated «poppiness» of Working On A Dream put a special mark on it. Fans may have been irate at Bruce borrowing musical ideas from KISS, but one can­not deny that, in this way, he at least gave us all something to remember that record by. Fast for­ward now to 2012 and his next studio LP, and here is something that is completely by the num­bers — conforming to all known stereotypes of The Boss and violating none of them.

Naturally, Springsteen feeds on social problems and regurgitates them as vibrating, spirited music, which is where he is usually at his best — and this time, the incentive behind the music and the anger has been the global financial crisis: a great opportunity to finally realize one's dream to be­come an authentic Woody Guthrie, strolling through Depression streets and providing voice ser­vices to all those devoid of voices. Never mind that by 2012, the crisis had largely abated; it only matters that there be a spark to light up the fire, and as prolific as Bruce usually is, he likes to have these sparks flying around, rarely venturing into the studio without a good pretext.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, Wrecking Ball conjures active memories of The Seeger Sessions: even though all the songs are original, they are mostly written in the folk paradigm, with simple, repe­titive, traditional structures that have more in common with highland ballads than with Bruce's usual rock formula. Only a few members of the E Street Band appear on the record, and even then not on all the tracks; there are a few sax solos from Clarence Clemons, who died in 2011, a few tracks with Weinberg on the drums, and a couple Van Zandt mandolin tracks — the rest is taken care of by session musicians, which has a negative impact on the album's energy levels, but I guess if the Boss decided the E Street Band was not appropriate enough for these songs, he must have had his own reasons.

Alas, if he hoped this would be a new Rising — in the sense of that major «jolt» to put the nation back on its feet or something like that — I am afraid that it has only been one in the minds of Rolling Stone-style critics. The songs aren't exactly bad (in fact, relying on these formulas is a good guarantee against «badness» in general), but without the E Street Band, and with his own strength also beginning to give up after all these years, Bruce gets bogged down somewhere in between a whimper and a bang.

ʽWe Take Care Of Our Ownʼ, the opening song, was once again used in Obama's (second) presidential campaign, and it is a perfect song for a presidential cam­paign — loud, muscular, optimistic, smooth, safe, catchy, cozily played out by the New York String Section, and ultimately forgettable like any of your average anthems. It has its rallying use, I guess, but it is essentially one simple musical phrase repeated over and over again in a glossy manner: the muscle is there all right, but there is hardly any genuine sweat on it. It sounds like something made on order — and yes, I remember well that ʽBorn In The USAʼ was all made up according to the same principles (and its synthesized sound had dated fairly quickly, unlike this string orches­tra thing), but at least back in 1984 Springsteen still had plenty of youthful soul and stamina to push into that form. ʽWe Take Care Of Our Ownʼ is just... limp.

As is most of everything else. A particularly good example is ʽLand Of Hope And Dreamsʼ, a fairly old song that was performed live as early as 1999, and used to be one of the highlights of Bruce's show — with a "this train..." section that may be the man's sincerest and most emotional contribution to the gospel genre — but this version is surprisingly flaccid compared to the way it used to sound, not just because the man's voice is giving out, but also because the arrangement replaces raw energy with a wall-of-sound approach. Still a good song, but give me the Live In New York version of this any time.

I have not even mentioned that the man's lyrics seem to turn more and more into tripe as the years go by. You may adore or hate the lyrics of ʽBorn To Runʼ, but you have to admit that, in any case whatsoever, something like "This is my confession / I need your heart / In this depression / I need your heart" is just way below the threshold — and this song is supposed to be a spiritual conso­lation for all the poor souls ravaged by the crisis. Or this: "We are alive / And though our bodies lie alone here in the dark / Our souls and spirits rise / To carry the fire and light the spark / To fight shoulder to shoulder and heart to heart" — exactly how many dusty clichés are entrenched within this passage? No matter, as long as old and new fans alike are willing to gobble it up. And then there is the irony of the title track, which can be taken half-literally (as a cocky protest of the old Giants Stadium against its demolition) and figuratively (as a nation's cocky stand-off against economic trouble), but then when you realize that the Stadium was demolished after all, the line about "bring on your wrecking ball" takes on a fairly ironic shade.

In the end, as simply a collection of songs Wrecking Ball is relatively okay. But as a major social statement, it seems to me a transparent misfire, embarrassed by its own ambition and buried in its shallowness-masquerading-as-depth; and if Magic at least still showed signs of life, and Working On A Dream still showed signs of searching for life, Wrecking Ball is like a wad of chewing gum that finally ran out of the last bits of flavor. At the very least, it shows that being deeply moved by other people's troubles no longer guarantees high quality — or, who knows, it might show that in this particular case, the Boss was not that deeply moved by other people's troubles. After all, with the Democrats in power and the crisis clearly not being on the level of the Great Depression, it's hard to believe that the man was in some really deep apocalyptic mood; and thus, we just have another set of optimistic «we shall overcome» statements where, truth be told, it is not quite clear even to the artist what exactly it is that we need to be overcoming.

For the record, ʽRocky Groundʼ here features the first ever appearance of a rap vocal on a Spring­steen album — provided by backup singer Michelle Moore (happily for all of us, Bruce changed his original mind about performing the rap himself). So there's at least one objective argument for defending the man's ability to keep up with the times, about twenty years too late but better late than never. This patented bit of sarcasm, however, has nothing to do with my thumbs down assessment of the album. Rather, the thumbs down have to do with the bitter realisation that, in a way, Bruce Springsteen has turned into a pale parody of his former self. And if you happen to disagree and are preparing an angry retort here, please take the time to relisten to Darkness On The Edge Of Town first, and then see if your angry retort has lost any of its anger.

Oh, and if you happen to be David Fricke from Rolling Stone, the author of a five-star review that began with the phrase "Wrecking Ball is the most despairing, confrontational and musically tur­bulent album Bruce Springsteen has ever made", I do so hope that you be rewarded in the after­life by having to listen to nothing but Billy Joel, of whom you also seem to be a huge fan.

Bruce Springsteen: Working On A Dream

BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN: WORKING ON A DREAM (2009)

1) Outlaw Pete; 2) My Lucky Day; 3) Working On A Dream; 4) Queen Of The Supermarket; 5) What Love Can Do; 6) This Life/Good Eye; 7) Tomorrow Never Knows; 8) Life Itself; 9) Kingdom Of Days; 10) Surprise, Surprise; 11) The Last Carnival; 12*) The Wrestler.

This one was released seven days after Obama's inauguration — coincidence? Perhaps, but the fact that the mood here is way more sunny and optimistic than it was on Magic is not a coinci­dence at all, especially keeping in mind that the title track was first played live at the November 2, 2008 concert in support of Obama, two days before the general elections. And now comes the blatant question: do you prefer your Springsteen morose and grumpy, or do you prefer him humo­rous, lightweight, and idealistically optimistic?

Of course, it really depends on a lot of other factors. ʽWorking On A Dreamʼ (the song), for in­stance, is a sunny power pop anthem that feels more like Christine McVie than Springsteen, pos­sibly because the "aa-ooh la-la-la, aa-ooh la-la-la" backing vocals had been borrowed directly from ʽSay You Love Meʼ (it's true, I swear!) and possibly because Bruce was all set to beat Bill Clinton's success with ʽDon't Stopʼ. Like, Americans all over the States heard the song on Novem­ber 2 and the fate of the elections was sealed, you know. But that doesn't prevent the tune from sounding a wee bit silly and manipulative in retrospect.

Not as silly, granted, as ʽQueen Of The Supermarketʼ, which arguably features the worst exten­ded lyrical meta­phor of the man's career — okay, there's nothing wrong about writing yet another story of sexual attraction between two simple people, but "take my place in the check-out line"? "I'm in love with the Queen of the Supermarket, though her company cap covers her hair"? Worst of all, "beneath her white apron her secret remains hers"? Boy, we've come a really long way since ʽIncident On 57th Streetʼ and the like. At least if there were some indication that this is an intentional tongue-in-cheek self-parody or something... apparently, though, this is an UN-in­tentional self-parody, ohmygosh.

The embarrassment does not stop there, because the real burning question that has gone unan­swered since 2009 is this: Does the sprawling quasi-Western epic ʽOutlaw Peteʼ consciously nick the primary melody of KISS' ʽI Was Made For Loving Youʼ, or is this just a really unfortunate coincidence? Never mind that the lyrics of the song are once again triter than tripe (just put the words next to, say, ʽJunglelandʼ, and see for yourself how fickle that poetic gift is) — why does this have to sound like a cross between Tommy ("can you hear me? can you hear me?") and a three-decade old corny disco song? Was that a serious attempt at breaking away from the formula? Well, ʽOutlaw Peteʼ is a strong breakaway from the formula, but the price is just too high.

And even that is not all: why does the song ʽTomorrow Never Knowsʼ borrow its title from the Beatles and its scratch-guitar opening from CCR's ʽLooking Out My Back Doorʼ, yet ends up sounding like neither, but instead turns out to be a simple, fast-paced country tune with steel gui­tar and female backing vocals a-plenty? Why do I actually have this strange uncomfortable fee­ling that Bruce's desire to make a cheerful «roots-pop» album has lessened the gap between him­self and his compatriots, Bon Jovi, in their «country» phase?..

Yes, about half of these songs have sunny pop hooks that might even get entangled in some of your nerve nodes (ʽSurprise, Surpriseʼ is a good example: you might reasonably complain about the word "surprise" being repeated way too many times, but it'll still get you), but this is still Bruce Springsteen, you know — all these slight, simple pop hooks are imbued with his sweaty earthiness, and thus, it is a simplistic, lightweight record that demands to be taken as seriously as ever. Which is where we have a communicative failure. How can you take Bruce Springsteen seriously when he's (sub)consciously stealing melodies from KISS, for Christ's sake? Oh well, at least that is a bizarre oddity that does go against formula. But most of the songs here do not go against formula, and stuff like ʽQueen Of The Supermarketʼ just parodies the formula (honestly, it's the kind of tune I'd expect to see featured in some SNL broadcast).

On the positive side, this is really the Boss at his happiest since... Lucky Town, I guess, which probably makes Working On A Dream the relative equivalent of that album for the next decade. Not exactly a compliment, I know, but we should be glad to see other people in happy moods, shouldn't we? After all, it's not as if he'd give us another Darkness On The Edge Of Town now even if America invaded half of the world's countries at once, so we might as well relax and give the man a break. If he wants to flirt around with supermarket clerks, that's none of our business, it's all between the man and Patti anyway.

Bruce Springsteen: Magic

BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN: MAGIC (2007)

1) Radio Nowhere; 2) You'll Be Coming Down; 3) Livin' In The Future; 4) Your Own Worst Enemy; 5) Gypsy Biker; 6) Girls In Their Summer Clothes; 7) I'll Work For Your Love; 8) Magic; 9) Last To Die; 10) Long Walk Home; 11) Devil's Arcade; 12) Terry's Song.

Please take a good, hard look at the grumpy old guy on the front sleeve and tell me if you notice any «magic» there. Come on now, I want you to admit, right here and now, that «magic» is the first word that springs to your mind when you look at that picture. No? Not really? Not even the slightest association? Now listen to the music on this album. More than likely, you will have to admit that the mood of music — autumnal, rough, gritty, grumpy, sulky, etc. — more or less suits the facial expression and even the tint of the front cover. So where's the magic?..

Really, even though after The Rising the Boss was untouchable from the critical angle, it is as if that record just sucked all the spirit of adventure out of the old guy. Magic is totally Springsteen by-numbers, as pattern-dominated and monotonous as The Rising was unpredictable and clearly inspired. All songs are brand new (no outtakes this time), and all songs feature the E Street Band, but essentially this is the E Street Band equivalent of Devils & Dust — the Boss is not really trying on this one. Of course, it gives the songs and the arrangements an air of spontaneity and looseness, and the songs do have their points and all; and yet, there is nothing new.

This isn't quite the equivalent of Human Touch or Lucky Town, though: in his respectable position of elder statesman, the Boss sees it as his duty now to write songs about big issues on a much-more-than-personal level, and there is plenty of comment here on the current state of things in America and the world at large, mostly concentrating, of course, on wartime issues (but some­times also on ʽGirls In Their Summer Clothesʼ, because, well, war is over there and girls in sum­mer clothes are over here, after all). In this way, Magic does look like a sequel to The Rising, and is perhaps best appreciated from this angle — only where The Rising was a strong electric jolt to put the nation back on its feet, Magic is the sound of asthenia setting in, a depiction of the directionless meandering of the nation, unable to find new cures for old problems.

"This is Radio Nowhere / Is there anybody alive out there?" is sort of the leitmotif of the entire album. It's a decent song, for which Bruce has adopted a crunchy, but muted and gray alt-rock guitar tone, and that tone is a frequent guest here, suggesting the usual power and energy of the E Street Band, but with something gone rotten in the process. From there on, it is the usual 4/4 snare beat and the well-worn mid-tempo without end, grooves that have been recycled for the dozenth time and only occasionally salvaged by fresh vocal hooks — faithfully holding up that grim, thoroughly non-magical mood, as if the man were all set on telling us: "Just get out of here, I'm depressed like hell and you want me to wreck my brain trying to come up with inventive song­writing? Why don't you do something inventive for a change — like go out there and vote the Republicans out of office, for instance?"

Which, you know, is a fine enough imaginative stance that I can buy, but uninventive songwriting leads to uninventive reviewing, and therefore I will just say that there are three more songs that stand out in various ways. ʽGirls In Their Summer Clothesʼ is a Springsteen-ized power pop song, with echoes of Phil Spector and Motown, where he actually tries to sing instead of grumble (to the same mid-tempo beats, though). ʽLong Walk Homeʼ has the album's catchiest chorus and may have been seriously influenced by the Seeger sessions with that folksy refrain ("hey pretty darling, don't wait up for me, gonna be a long walk home" sure sounds like it belongs in an Irish barroom song). And ʽDevil's Arcadeʼ is the only tune here that seems like a Rising outtake — with its ominously bombastic guitar, keyboard, and string overlays, it almost matches the epic peaks of that record, though even in this song all that desperation, poured into melancholic melodicity, feels somewhat stiff, numb and frozen. But maybe it's just because the man's voice got lower, and all the instruments have to accommodate.

Anyway, it is possible to look at Magic both ways — as simply another by-the-book uninspired batch of same-sounding, deeply derivative Bruce songs, or as an anti-climactic companion to The Rising, reflecting how the shock, grief, and decisive «start it all over again» attitude got bogged down in stupidity, backwardness, and disillusionment, with the music following suit. In both cases, though, this is an album conceived, arranged, and performed without too much energy or inspiration — either intentionally or unintentionally, I don't really care. It's not bad, but I could definitely stand a bit more diversity in melodies and arrangements. Heck, I could even use ano­ther rewrite of a ʽCadillac Ranchʼ or a ʽRamrodʼ for a change — this monotonousness could be justified if the sonic atmosphere or the melodies were outstanding, but as it is, fourty seven minu­tes of Springsteen being depressed over the Iraq war and God knows what else is real hard to take. I wish I could say "Oh well, at least this ain't another stab at Nebraska", but fact is, not even the E Street Band can help out here. Even The Big Man is playing his sax solos in a completely per­functory manner — like, "oh yeah, here we play like we did in ʽJunglelandʼ". Not good. 

Bruce Springsteen: Live In Dublin

BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN: LIVE IN DUBLIN (2007)

1) Atlantic City; 2) Old Dan Tucker; 3) Eye On The Prize; 4) Jesse James; 5) Further On (Up The Road); 6) O Mary Don't You Weep; 7) Erie Canal; 8) If I Should Fall Behind; 9) My Oklahoma Home; 10) Highway Patrolman; 11) Mrs. McGrath; 12) How Can A Poor Man Stand Such Times And Live; 13) Jacob's Ladder; 14) Long Time Comin'; 15) Open All Night; 16) Pay Me My Money Down; 17) Growin' Up; 18) When The Saints Go Marching In; 19) This Little Light Of Mine; 20) American Land; 21) Blinded By The Light*; 22) Love Of The Common People*; 23) We Shall Overcome*.

Apparently pleased with the vibes, results (and sales?) of We Shall Overcome, Bruce took The Seeger Sessions Band on tour — and not just anywhere on tour, but all the way to The Point Theatre in Dublin, to show these Irish sissies what a real man's reel really sounds like. The Irish sissies did not mind, and gave The Boss a truly international welcome. Probably feeling sancti­fied about getting to sing tura-lura-lura-lay smack dab in the heart of tura-lura-lay country and getting away with this, Bruce released the proceedings as a live DVD and a live album — not just «another live album», but a special one.

The obvious problem here is that The Seeger Sessions Band, as you might have guessed, mainly plays songs from The Seeger Sessions — all of that album is reproduced here with the exception of ʽJohn Henryʼ (too political?), ʽShenandoahʼ (too intimate and dirge-y?), and ʽFroggie Went A-Courtin'ʼ (now THAT I consider the crime of the century — depriving worthy Dubliners of a passionate, rabble-rousing, ball-breaking ʽFroggie Went A-Courtin'ʼ? What were they thinking?). Naturally, with the exception of a few extended jam bits, these songs sound mostly identical to the studio versions, which were produced less than a year ago, and it's not even a question of adding «live spirit», because The Seeger Sessions were themselves imbued with live spirit. So the enthusiastic roar of the Irish crowd may add a little adrenaline, but on the whole, when it comes to «paying me my money down», most people will think twice before paying twice for more or less the same thing.

The gimmick of the record is that, in addition to all the traditional songs, Bruce sneaks in some of his own material, rearranged... nay, rewritten in the same format, and then it all depends on what you think of the idea. Personally, I think it sucks. Perhaps he thought that he had no choice — the people wanted to hear at least some of his own songs, yet they would obviously sound strange wedged in between the old folk classics, so he just had to reinvent them as «pseudo-old folk clas­sics». But who needs an ʽAtlantic Cityʼ shorn of its hooks and recast as a speedy, but utterly generic bluegrass romp? Or ʽBlinded By The Lightʼ losing the verse-chorus contrast and reduced to a mumbled vocal delivery set to a relentless ska beat? Or ʽFurther On Up The Roadʼ turned from a dark, grizzly blues-rock number into a happy highlander anthem, with flutes and accor­dions and bagpipes (okay, no bagpipes... but there should have been bagpipes)?..

As a one-time experiment, this may be amusing, but artistically, this is a dead end: Bruce may have succeeded as an interpreter of traditional old-school songwriting, but as an imitator, he does poorly even when compared to Woody Guthrie, let alone all those nameless ballad writers whose legacy has outlived their identities just because the legacy meant so much more to people than the identities. Likewise, he does not fare that well when he takes old songs with well-established forms and tries to recast them into something completely different — his multi-vocalist take on ʽWhen The Saints Go Marching Inʼ, remade as a soulful acoustic ballad, is plain boring. Besides, what's up with having a fully formed brass section, capable of hitting up that New Orleans sound in no time, and not doing ʽSaintsʼ the way it should be done? Shouldn't he be old and wise enough now to stop with these «confound-all-expectations» childish games? Come on out and decide, Mr. Springsteen — is it «give the people what they want», or is it «the artist bows down to no public pressure»? You've been having it both ways at the same time for so long now, it's become downright irritating at times.

Anyway, it's not as if I did not enjoy Live In Dublin — it's just that, on the larger scale of things, it feels like a conjectural appendix to The Seeger Sessions. Or you might turn it around and say that the Springsteen vibe really only shines to its brightest extent in the context of an arena, in which case The Seeger Sessions will be merely a warm-up prelude to the mass epiphany of Live In Dublin. But viewing both as equally important would be quite illogical, and I, personally, choose the former — it's more concise and compact and it lacks any failed self-experiments. The only track I'd gladly salvage from here is ʽOpen All Nightʼ, which I didn't even recognize at first, an old Nebraska number completely redone as a rollickin' / rip-roarin' honky-tonk number with a bedazzling piano part. Put it as a bonus track onto The Seeger Sessions and that's all we need.

Bruce Springsteen: We Shall Overcome - The Seeger Sessions

BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN: WE SHALL OVERCOME: THE SEEGER SESSIONS (2006)

1) Old Dan Tucker; 2) Jesse James; 3) Mrs. McGrath; 4) O Mary Don't You Weep; 5) John Henry; 6) Erie Canal; 7) Jacob's Ladder; 8) My Oklahoma Home; 9) Eyes On The Prize; 10) Shenandoah; 11) Pay Me My Money Down; 12) We Shall Overcome; 13) Froggie Went A Courtin'.

Was this inevitable? Bob Dylan entered his «roots revival» stage in the early Nineties, having turned 50, and even though many more people probably praised Good As I Been To You and World Gone Wrong than people who actually keep on listening to these records a quarter cen­tury later, at least nobody will deny that they did help revitalize his artistically sagging career and, in a way, prepared the ground for Time Out Of Mind. Springsteen enters that same stage com­paratively a little bit later (about five years or so), but a bigger difference is that, unlike Dylan, Bruce never had an early folk-loving stage — his very first albums were already influenced much more by Dylan himself than any of Dylan's folk hero predecessors, and Bruce was never known all that much for covering other people's songs, anyway.

But I do not think that, once the initial news leaked out that Springsteen was recording a whole bunch of traditional folk songs from the Pete Seeger songbook, anybody doubted that he could make these tunes his own. I'd rather think that, perhaps, one could doubt whether he could have preserved something of the old spirit of these songs — instead of just Springsteen-izing them — and it is for this precise reason, arguably, that the sessions were held not with the regular E Street Band, once again temporarily put on hold, but with a bunch of new musicians from the New Jer­sey Area, not at all well known but apparently well versed in traditional music. Acoustic guitars, fiddles, banjos, old-timey percussion, the works. On top of that, one major surprising addition are The Miami Horns, regularly sitting in on most of the tracks and giving them a decidedly New Or­leanian flavor — and on top of it all, there's The Boss and his well-worn raggedy voice, now per­fectly adaptable to conveying that grizzly folk spirit.

How does it work? Well, the biggest flaw of the album is that it's almost predictably good. Most likely, you already know many of these songs — and unless you just hate the folk tradition as such, these are all fine examples of the genre. Most likely, you already know how The Boss in­spires his backing bands to play at top energy level — and how well he can impersonate that pro­verbial Working Man, taking his time on the front porch after a hard day's work to provide some simple, unadorned musical joy for himself, his family, and his neighbors. Most likely, you also know how The Boss is stubbornly resistant to musical fashions (especially having learned his lesson with bad production in the Eighties), and you know he is not going to rearrange these songs as raves, raps, or metalcore. A project like this has a near-zero probability of failure, and this is precisely what makes it not very exciting.

I don't even want to comment on any of the songs individually, because most of them serve the same purpose: entertainment. This is not some sort of sanctifying project where one turns the songs upside down and shows you the interesting stuff in those little corners and pockets that you never saw there before. These are big band arrangements for party halls and country fairs, to which people simply dance the night away, regardless of whether the lyrics tell bloody stories of Jessy James, Biblical parables, sailor sagas, or silly kid tales of how Froggie went a-courtin'. This is why the tracks are long and repetitive, and all the choruses are catchy because they are looped almost to infinity — you're not really supposed to notice that, you're simply supposed to keep on dancing, caught up in a rhythmic whirlwind. And the Boss is right there, giving you a prime example of inexhaustible energy and passion. You stop only when he stops, no earlier.

That said, I am still content to have this. The brass arrangements of the material are somewhat of a novelty, yet they work — giving the songs an extra «cabaret» flavor, perhaps, but one that does not feel alien to the material. And if you want to hear those old-timey numbers played with gusto, with as much bravado, volume, and recklessness as possible, I'd be hard pressed to come up with a better candidate than The Seeger Sessions — Bruce never relents, and on songs like ʽJacob's Ladderʼ or ʽO Mary Don't You Weepʼ, you can almost feel him pushing, pushing, pushing the band to further heights of passion with each new reprisal of the chorus. Subtlety is not a welcome guest on the record; subtlety is left over to the real Pete Seeger, or the likes of The Country Gen­tlemen. Here, it's all about going wild, and who's better at going wild than Springsteen? And at the tender age of 55, too, it's like the perfect balance between being old enough to lend some spirit of authenticity here, but young enough to still be able to kick up a good ruckus.

This does not conceal the fact that the record is lightweight, and in general more of a temporary amusement for Springsteen rather than a serious project — but clearly, the man has earned a right to some lightweight detours, and paying tribute to a musical genre without which your musical genre would not exist in the first place may be the best choice for such a lightweight detour. I will probably refrain from an explicit thumbs up here, because after the first few songs, the predicta­bility effect becomes so strong that tediousness begins to set in; however, I will never say that the album is completely expendable, either — at the very least, it is a meaningful chapter in the Springsteen book, if not necessarily a meaningful milestone in the art of folk music revival.

Bruce Springsteen: Devils & Dust

BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN: DEVILS & DUST (2005)

1) Devils & Dust; 2) All The Way Home; 3) Reno; 4) Long Time Comin'; 5) Black Cowboys; 6) Maria's Bed; 7) Silver Palomino; 8) Jesus Was An Only Sun; 9) Leah; 10) The Hitter; 11) All I'm Thinkin' About; 12) Matamoros Banks.

If you are not a dedicated Boss man, most likely you will not be interested in any Springsteen albums past The Rising. He deserves mega-respect for the effort, which was not only his most gargantuan, but also most daring and experimental blast in years — but it seems to have drained his creativity, and everything released since then played it safer, homelier, and more predictable. The man had little left to prove, after all, and was only too happy, it seems, to slip into a stable «elder statesman» image, promoted by such institutions as Rolling Stone (whose editors would never dare to give any of his subsequent records anything less than 4.5 stars) and the Rock'n'Roll Hall Of Fame (where he is one of the most frequent guests whenever anything presumably important is going on). This is not to say that he's turned to crap or anything — however «frozen» his sound has become, it is at least frozen in a tasteful configuration, unlike, say, Aerosmith — but, I repeat, unless you are a diehard fan, it is not easy to get a natural adrenaline rush from lis­tening to anything he created after the Twin Tower crash.

With Devils & Dust, released three years after the triumph of The Rising, Bruce repeats the old trick of «cooling down» — a low-key, largely acoustic record, made without the help of the E Street Band, to reroute the huge external emotional rush of its predecessor and internalize it. A move that, by now, has become all too predictable, and all too dangerous, given how The Boss is such a master of the «big and bulging», but not doing so good at the «subtle and nuanced», where he'd never really managed to dethrone Dylan or Johnny Cash. Luckily, this is not a flat-out bad album like Tom Joad; but neither does it have any staggering highlights like Nebraska's ʽState Trooperʼ or ʽAtlantic Cityʼ.

Then again, on Nebraska what we saw was a still young, hungry, and angry Bruce Springsteen, and even some of its worst songs could still vibrate with emotional tension. Here, what we have is an old, tired, and contemplative Bruce Springsteen — and, I dunno, he might not really be that old and tired, but he's playing out that role anyway. The title track was written from the perspec­tive of a soldier in the Iraq war, and it is a very quiet, soulful, mournful, and maybe even bashful acoustic ballad that simply describes the psychological effects of war rather than rails against them. It is decent, but it is absolutely unexceptional — lyrics, vocals, melody, arrangement, at­mosphere, all of this is rather standard singer-songwriter fare. And by 2005, I'm sure, all of us have heard so many anti-war songs that this one will not be likely to come across as an amazing epiphany. All I can say is that it sounds «authentic», like one more professionally performed exe­rcise in folk-style songwriting — and the same goes for just about everything else here.

Of course, the Boss remains a revered word man to an even larger extent than a music man, and he offers plenty of points for lyrical discussions here — in ʽRenoʼ, for instance, he imagines (or remembers? whatever) an encounter with a local hooker in almost pornographically explicit de­tails, making his subset of housewife fans blush all across the neighborhood; of course, the main point is not that the song features the line "two hundred dollars straight in, two-fifty up the ass", but that even during a quick local dirty sex act, the protagonist is still reminiscing of "sunlight streaming thru your hair" and "that smile coming out 'neath your hat" — but, you know, those kinds of lines we all know in Boss songs already, while "two-fifty up the ass" is definitely a no­velty. And then there's ʽThe Hitterʼ, which is his personal ʽThe Boxerʼ, only set to some Woody Guthrie melody rather than a Paul Simon one. And then there are stories of ramblers, cowboys, lots of Mexican imagery for some reason, and a bit of Jesus on the side.

But even if you can still extract a few samples of clever folk-poetry images from some of the songs (not all, though — ʽJesus Was An Only Sonʼ is so oddly straightforward, it could just as well have been an outtake from Dylan's Saved), as songs, these things aren't all too compelling. Looking back one more time, I can remember being mildly entertained by two of them — ʽMaria's Bedʼ has some seductive slide guitar riffs, played à la George Harrison circa 1973-74, a catchy vocal melody, and an irresistible toe-tapping groove; and ʽAll I'm Thinkin' Aboutʼ is a humorous folk boogie where Bruce is attempting to express his feelings for his baby by rising all, or most, of the way up to falsetto — it's shakey, but fun.

Unfortunately, both of these songs are semi-comic interludes, and it is the «heavy», «serious» stuff that largely leaves me unmoved. It's all listenable — it's simply not clear why exactly we need somebody of Bruce Springsteen's caliber to perform it, when any experienced old-timer from Nashville or Oklahoma could easily do instead. Worst of all, these really aren't deep songs: this is Springsteen trying to write something in the half-century-old folk idiom, instead of adap­ting that idiom to his own personality, as he'd occasionally done in the past. Perhaps this is a noble case of artistic humility, but if so, I would be perfectly happy to bow down in acknowledg­ment — humility is a rare and respectable quality — and move along to the next record.

Bruce Springsteen: The Rising

BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN: THE RISING (2002)

1) Lonesome Day; 2) Into The Fire; 3) Waitin' On A Sunny Day; 4) Nothing Man; 5) Countin' On A Miracle; 6) Empty Sky; 7) Worlds Apart; 8) Let's Be Friends; 9) Further On (Up The Road); 10) The Fuse; 11) Mary's Place; 12) You're Missing; 13) The Rising; 14) Paradise; 15) My City Of Ruins.

The very idea of a 70-minute long album, primarily inspired by the events of 9/11 and intended to serve as mass spiritual therapy for the aftermath of 9/11, makes me feel somewhat uneasy. There is no getting away from the fact that Bruce Springsteen is the living patron saint of the entire New Jersey area and its immediate surroundings, including New York City — and to ignore 9/11 in his music would have been regarded as a personal insult by most of the people living there and as a bewildering puzzle by the musical press; after all, Springsteen is no Dylan, and occasional con­founding of people's expectations is as far as he is willing to go. And yet, an entire album? Isn't this too much of a temptation to play God — something that Bruce had come pretty close to, but never quite nailed at least a few times in his career?

And maybe the biggest problem with The Rising is also its most predictable problem: striving, as usual, to reach the largest possible audience, the Boss trivializes the issues at stake and addresses them on a very simple (and safe) gut level. There has been a terrible tragedy. Many people have died, and even more people lost their loved ones. The grief is almost unbearable and makes you question the very meaning of your existence and whether it makes sense to go on at all. But, as we have always done before, we will pull through, rebuild our lives from scratch, if necessary, and hold on to our beliefs and ideals because there's nothing wrong with them. This is what The Rising is all about — no less, no more. There is not the slightest attempt here to put the whole thing into a larger context: other than, perhaps, a very thickly veiled lyrical hint at the distance between East and West (ʽWorlds Apartʼ, Bruce's not-half-bad attempt at introducing Near Eastern motives into his songwriting), 9/11 is basically just pictured as an ordinary natural disaster. Like an earthquake or something. Well... nobody said it ain't permissible, right? But then... looks a bit cheap. But then again... since when has Bruce Springsteen been all that expen­sive, anyway? Everything is just the way it should be.

The best thing about The Rising, however, is not that it gives us any new, deep, revealing in­sights into the tragedy of 9/11 or an amazing spiritual instruction on how to overcome the after­shock of that particular tragedy — the best thing is that, somehow, the tragedy inspired Spring­steen into writing his most consistent, powerful, memorable, and just plain interesting set of songs in almost two decades, and also one that he has not been able to top ever since, despite the steady rate of new studio output in the 21st century. These songs are bombastic, but convincingly so, thanks to the definitive return of The E Street Band into the studio; emotionally straight­forward and (usually) not-too-subtle, but diverse and hard-hitting; rhythmically plodding in the same 4/4 midtempo most of the time, and yet still somehow experimental for the man's stan­dards, due, among other things, to the heavy (and thoughtful) use of strings.

Quite a few of the songs here were actually written well before 9/11, but Bruce specifically took the ones that could be directly or indirectly related to the event (ʽMy City Of Ruinsʼ was origi­nally written about Asbury Park, but whaddaya know) and hammered them together into this coherent requiem/oratorio for E Street Band and orchestra, where everything seems organic, and expressions of sorrow, sympathy, and temporary despair regularly alternate with tremendously life-asserting songs — without a single hint of corniness, I should admit.

Some of the sorrowful songs sound like outtakes from the «adult contemporary» era: ʽNothing Manʼ, for instance, with its hazy aura, would have fit in very well on Tunnel Of Love. But when this stuff comes in small dosages, is well produced and armed with a good vocal hook, it works much more efficiently than anything on his lazy breakup record. ʽEmpty Skyʼ is simple, direct, Biblical, and best distinguished by its hoarse, almost distorted harmonica line, Bruce's local ver­sion of the Archangel's trumpet. But maybe the saddest song here is really ʽThe Fuseʼ, a deeply atypical, unconventional, almost psychedelic song for Bruce — hip-hop beats, samples, «cosmic» guitars, by the end it becomes more ʽTomorrow Never Knowsʼ than good old Springsteen, and the lyrics are genuinely disturbing, alternating between wedding night imagery and "blood moon risin' in a sky of black dust", all delivered in a voice that has been intentionally stripped from all emotion, like in a Robert Bresson movie. This is one of those unique Springsteen songs, like ʽAdam Raised A Cainʼ, that shows to what sort of scary psychological depths the man can really go when he lets out his demons instead of keeping them on a commercial leash.

Fortunately, there's much to laud here even about the simple, unadorned, easily accessible stuff. Like ʽWaitin' On A Sunny Dayʼ, whose instantly memorable riff is entrusted to strings (for the first time in Springsteen history, right?) and thrusts a good chunk of sunny hope right in your face before taking it away once again with the next song (ʽNothing Manʼ). Or the ultra-traditionally titled ʽFurther On (Up The Road)ʼ, which has nothing to do with the old Bobby Bland blues song except for also being bluesy in essence, but promises redemption in a gritty, sweaty, grimy way, through brutal riffage and «dirty» harmonica playing. Or ʽMary's Placeʼ, which shows some re­semblance to ʽRosalitaʼ — a happy, exuberant romp in the face of all disasters and calamities, well supported by Clarence's sax (and a whole brass section in the background), even if the pro­tagonist of ʽRosalitaʼ is visibly older now, almost by thirty years. But he still remembers Sam Cooke with fondness, and wants to invoke a bit of his name to help brighten up your day.

As we get to the anthemic title track, the ground has been tilled well enough to make it seem like a gargantuan climax to the whole oratorio — an echo is laid on Bruce's voice to make it sky-high, the background singers woo-hoo like well-trained angels, the lyrics are Catholic to exhaustion, and for those of you who want more rock than soul, the Boss plays a shrill, distorted, ecstatic, Neil Young-ian guitar solo, so that basically just covers everything. And just in case you didn't get it first time around, you will be prompted to rise up one more time, during the long, bombas­tic prayer of ʽMy City Of Ruinsʼ. (The first prayer of the album was already recited near the be­ginning, with ʽInto The Fireʼ, which should probably be made into the International Fireman Anthem or something — it just begs to).

It's all simple and a wee bit manipulative, but it works, and at least it's all for a good cause. In fact, maybe the best thing about The Rising is that it is not tightly bound to its historical context — even the lyrics are crafted thoughtfully, so that they do not have to be associated with any parti­cular details. It's just a very good rock record about tragedy and recuperation in general, taking away Bruce's usual emphasis on «aggrandizing the little man» and replacing it with something even more sweeping and grandiose — the collective experience of tragedy and the collective hope for a rebirth. Amusing, but The Boss never really did anything like this before; certainly he did not have to assume the position of a newly elected military leader, gathering up the remains of his forces after a crushing defeat. And he must be given credit for carrying out the operation in good taste, without descending into simplistic jingoism and paying as much attention to the musical backbones and arrangements of the songs as he does to the lyrics and vocals. All in all, The Rising still remains one of his best albums — no small feat for a rock artist thirty years into his career — and with every new year that takes us farther away from 9/11 and dissipates its con­textual relevance, it seems to sound better and better to me. Thumbs on up for The Rising, al­though we probably should not be thanking Osama bin Laden for rekindling the creative fires of a nearly-has-been rock visionary. The price may have been just a wee bit too steep.