"E" Is For Excellent

There are few things in life as satisfying as listening to a brand-new Bruce Springsteen album on the day it's released. Well, maybe some, but they usually don't involve headphones...

I listened to it once yesterday after getting the iTunes download (I had it pre-paid to get it right away) and I've just returned from a long walk where I heard all of "Magic" for a second time on my iPod. I was so into the experience that when I passed my friend Anne on the street I almost missed her.

This is Springsteen’s first album of original songs with the E Street Band since 2004. Don't get me wrong, though, I absolutely thought "We Shall Overcome: The Seeger Sessions" and "Live in Dublin" were extraordinary. This latest, however, is a return to form in a powerful way.

It's very political, too, although I have to confess that on first or second listens for me, I don't focus on the meaning of the words but on the emotion of the music. Here's what Rolling Stone's David Fricke said about the politics in his review:

...Springsteen’s songwriting here is also intricately wired with outrage and disbelief. The pain, courage and genuine love of country that he saw and felt after 9/11 and put to song with the E Street Band on The Rising have gone up in flames and betrayal. He makes no direct references to Iraq, Bush or the so-called Patriot Act. He doesn’t need them. The pared metaphors and straight talk carry the weight and body count. Like “Born in the U.S.A.,” “Gypsy Biker” is the sober homecoming of a war veteran with images of anxious preparation (“We pulled your cycle out of the garage/And polished up the chrome”) and wasted effort (“The speculators made their money on the blood you shed”). Except this time, the soldier is returning in a coffin, and the devastated singer is numb with grief, mourning over lines of cocaine. “Last to Die”takes off like “Thunder Road,”but into a darkness of unknown depth. “Who will be the last to die for a mistake?”Springsteen sings, gripping the wheel and marking the miles in fires and martyrs from both sides of the road. And the title song, a skeleton dance of acoustic guitar and cimbalom, is a catalog of tricks, not magic. At the end, Springsteen adds up the high price of White House snake oil in a voice strained with exhaustion: “There’s bodies hangin’ in the trees/This is what will be, this is what will be.”

Let's get back to the music itself, though. I know this will mark me, maybe, as a lightweight but the song that hooked me immediately was the beach-radio sound of "Girls in Their Summer Clothes." After that, though, there are so many great cuts: "I'll Work for Your Love," "Your Own Worst Enemy," "Magic" and "The Long Walk Home" grab you right away. I was less passionate for the first cut they released from this as a tease, "Radio Nowhere" but it's good, too. Nothing that turned me off.

The thing is, it's great, it's Springsteen, and I'm damn glad we have him around because nobody, and I mean nobody, can do what he does as well as he does it.

Comments

[Thomas]

Have you heard there has been some online talk about Radio Nowhere having alot of similarity to 867-5309/Jenny. If you listen to the chorus it fits pretty well. Good to hear he has a new album, but since I haven't bought a major label artist since they started to sue their fan base I doubt I'll ever hear it.