Bruce Springsteen has built a 40 year recording career around his all-American everyman persona, singing of life in his homeland from the perspective of the people who can relate tangibly to his subject matter. From the burning desire and aspirations of a young man from New Jersey in the seventies, yearning for escape but unsure which way to run, to the good-old-boy blue collar rocker persona he inhabits today. It’s worked so well for him over the decades too, enabling frequent comment on the political situation and the painting of lucid pictures on relationship dramas, scenarios and consequences from the real world around him. In 1987, when aiming to write more broadly about love, with added depth, he took inspiration perhaps more than ever from his own personal life, in particular a recent divorce. That album, ‘Tunnel Of Love’, was one of Springsteen’s best but his writing suffered for the first time in his career immediately after. The Bruce we first glimpsed in the 1990s sounded lost, uninspired even, singing about not-so-taxing problems such as failing to find something worth watching on TV. It took a re-connection with the E-Street Band (quietly laid off around 1989) and the impetus of September 11th 2001 to refocus him, which when it happened did so in spectacular fashion on 2002’s ‘The Rising’. Since then he has generally maintained a high standard of work, a healthy output both live and in the studio that's included his own unique take on American Folk music with the ‘Seeger Sessions’ album, effectively putting a rocket up the genre in atypical Bruce style. Approaching his sixties though, it did start to look like another classic album of original material could be a big ask. When will we learn to stop underestimating the man? Once again, home soil turbulence that has stoked The Boss’s creative juices leading to a remarkable new record.
The thunderous nature of the opening drums on ‘We Take Care Of Our Own’ pretty much sets the tempo for the whole record. The man has something to say and he wants you to listen, so it's attention grabbing hooks and beats on overload. The message is clear; Bruce is hurting and hacked off that the put upon US working populace are left to struggle to keep their own house in order amidst poverty and unemployment with no capacity or impetus to think in terms of community, it rankles with him. This is not the promised land, instead his people are forced to whore themselves out looking for 'Easy Money', as heard on the second song. ‘Jack Of All Trades’ is the first slower number; about making do in hard times, it’s a simply sung textbook Springsteen hymn but there’s an undercurrent. Scraping intensity and disquiet illustrated in the unsettling layers of sound beneath the song nearly exploding when Bruce gets to the line about having a gun and shooting the “bastards on sight”. It’s a trick pulled off exquisitely a few times across the album, with a straight ahead song, taken at face value, actually evoking the pressure of impending poverty and bankruptcy that leaves too many families feeling like they’re close to breaking point, that they could drown at any minute. ‘Death To My Hometown’ is a glorious stomp to the casual listener but here again, just like on ‘Born In The USA’ in fact; the fist pumping celebratory vibe is just a mere smokescreen for simmering rage. “We know that come tomorrow none of this will be here, so hold tight to your anger, don’t fall to your fears” he sings on ‘Wrecking Ball’, voicing it like a rallying cry that’s none more bitter and defeated; as if to say there’s nothing here we’re going to hold onto so let’s just have a ball and smash it up. Here again though, Bruce speaks with an authority that few, least of all me, would dare question; if anyone has earned the right to speak for the inner psyche of the American working man it’s him.
Next we get a little diversion from the main text, a foxy little number called ‘You’ve Got It’ that struts the kind of come-on Bruce hasn’t shown much since his 80s pomp doing hammed up live versions of his song ‘Fire’. Does it seem a little out of place in context? Of course it doesn’t, all the best dramas throw a little sex into the mix and this track is actually one of the best songs on here amongst some strong company. There’s room for a touch of reflection in the second half but it’s almost always tempered with a steely resilience. ‘Land Of Hope And Dreams’ starts quoting the old folk song ‘This Train’ but there’s a twist, for this train is carrying losers, whores and lost souls alongside the winners and saints. A moving sidenote to both this and the title track is that they feature the last recorded work of sadly passed E Street Band saxophonist Clarence Clemons. Bruce's imploring everyone to keep faith always sounded so uplifting next to the 'Big Man's' emphatic accompaniment and it's effect was in no way lessened on their swansong together, but even that positivity seems like false hope on penultimate track ‘Swallowed Up’, where the beaten are merely disappeared from the world. It plays like a mournful requiem, at odds with the fight and fire we’ve seen elsewhere. Beautifully judged and arguably the only appropriate place to leave this set but that’s not Springsteen’s style, never knowingly taking his audience down and then leaving them there. The raucous barn-dance scene on celebratory closer ‘American Land’ may lyrically be the most baffling thing on here, is that sarcasm where he sings of immigrants of a land “where gold comes rushing out the rivers”? Maybe Bruce just wants to remind us of the bright and glorious land his home was once regarded as in order to reignite some of that ambition. After all, the thing that comes through crystal clear on this record is that he cares deeply about his subject matter. It’s at times like these that we really catch a glimpse of the fire in Bruce’s belly that made him one of our greatest Rock songwriters and performers in the first place.
You can Rock to Springsteen’s ‘Wrecking Ball’ by listening here:
Bruce Springsteen – Wrecking Ball
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