Bruce Springsteen - Classic or Dud ?

OK, the Homer post was unfair. This is better than I expected.

His last tour typically ended with this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_qoqsDL0gBk&feature=related

Fwiw, Springsteen's dad was Dutch/Irish.

It's a parallax -- you dig?

http://www.springsteeninireland.com/

This record is about 1000 times better than I imagined.

^^^ Exactly. I suspect it'll be forgotten soon enough, but it's easily his best since "The Rising," which itself took several years of sticking around to prove it would stick around.

huh, i really like "rocky ground," wasn't expecting that

digging this

dammit you people, i may have to listen to this.

BUT I DON'T WANNA LISTEN TO THIS

i kind of don't, since i listened to the last one and immediately regretted it.

I don't like the way his voice sounds when he sings anymore, it bums me out.

I dig his voice, I regret the production

but it's easily his best since "The Rising,"

I'm not a fan of The Rising. It's probably my least favorite of the six he's released in the last ten years.

By the way, how crazy is it that he's released six albums in the last ten years.

Death to My Hometown rages about a community toppled without a shot being fired by “the robber barons.” But it sounds almost cheery, with penny whistle and accordion leading a jaunty march down Main Street and Springsteen even adopting an Irish accent.

lmao

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UASyS-jUKKI

I'd have fonder memories The Rising had it been released an EP. Man is that thing long

i agree w/ vegemitegrrrl. he's been singin' kinda "shouty" since Magic (but it worked on Radio Nowhere) at least and i wish he'd stop it

loooool at Bruce's brogue

“the robber barons.”

stealin' me pot o' gold!!!

Someone wrote a comment that he thought Bruce sounded like the Progues. I never heard of the Progues, the person was right. I just listened to the Progues’ “Dirty Old Town”. Bruce does sound like them, but he is going to take their message to the Whole Wide World, because someone had to make their town a dirty old town and the same ideology destroyed many towns – maybe yours as well. I certainly know how easy it was for me to relate and to add my two cents.

1RMDorey 2 days ago

lmao xp

In case you missed it, fiddle band Bruce doing "Atlantic City" a few years back:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ARp_F4n6-gE

The Progues lololol

90 minute version of The Band Played Waltzing Matilda, with swirling twin-guitar solo in the middle

production/mastering on "death to my hometown" is a mess. cluttered and tinny. can't make out what the jaunty choir is singing on the chorus, if anything.

i love bruce and if i'm not mistaken somewhere in this long thread is an epic conversation b/t me, ally, ned, and other folks in which ally and i defend him to the bitter end. but i really don't appreciate his work of the past decade. it's not as much the persona, the lyrics -- it's the music. so little of it is given any room to breathe. little of it seems to modulate or build in any but the most obvious ways. oh well.

production/mastering on "death to my hometown" is a mess. cluttered and tinny. can't make out what the jaunty choir is singing on the chorus, if anything.

They're singing "Please don't brickwall/this song we worked so hard on"

You're right, sounds completely awful. And Bruce's singing is making me angry.

i kind of don't, since i listened to the last one and immediately regretted it.

i've enjoyed most everything that springsteen's released over the past 10 years and i hated working on a dream. his laziest thing since human touch. but i've liked what i've heard from this one.

also devils and dust is his best album of original material in this whole period (we shall overcome being the best record period), not the rising.

i do feel like devils and dust is mad underrated

ha. I was in Dublin a few years ago and Springsteen was everywhere. On every stereo in every record store, in every bar. There was even a bar called the 'thunder road cafe'. Eventually I went up to a guy in some second hand shop that was playing some live bootleg whatever springsteen thing (that sucked) and asked him what the deal with Ireland and Springsteen was, expecting to say that he was of Irish descent as Josh said but the guy just looked at me, narrowed his eyes and went 'he's just good'.

xpost "Devils & Dust" is an album you return to after you hear a few songs live and think, hey, these are good! And then you listen to the album and think, hey, this is dull. (See also: "Ghost of Tom Joad"). There's some fundamental problem Bruce has been having in the studio, in that even the albums that should have room to breathe are just as oppressive. It's not a coincidence that "We Shall Overcome" is his best album of the past decade or so, not because he didn't write the songs, but because the production (which sounds pretty live in a room to me) captures the sound and energy of Bruce and the band. The new one has some good songs on it, but once again its qualities are suppressed. Which is why I imagine this stuff will be so good live, freed from their shackles, as it were.

"Long Time Coming" off D&D is one of his best songs of the decade imho.

Sure, why not? But that album, which I tried to listen to again two weeks ago, is sort of deadly. Not as snoozy as Tom Joad, but a real drag. Good stories, dull songs.

What's the song in which the guy fucks a girl in the ass and calls it art?

Thunder Road

From your front porch to my front seat
The door's open but the ride it ain't free

the most obsessive bruce fan I ever met was irish

The new album is a positive surprise for me. I thought he was to old to rock like this, but working on the leftover material from "Darkness..." apparently has helped him regain his old torch.

It took him almost 30 years, but the proper followup to "Born In The USA" is finally here.

The challopy undercurrent of this post is very Geir, but the praise for an album so light on melody and so heavy on loops and stuff is very un-Geir. I'm torn.

i made a word cloud of lyrics for all of bruce springsteen's recorded history. I'm really surprised the biggest words aren't "burned", "abandoned", and "automobile."

http://i.imgur.com/ct2oN.jpg

Or "sir."

Now Ain't Got Know Night
Baby Back
Little Love
Well Just Come Now

^^Chinese bootleg Springsteen titles

damn, that wordcloud is very, uh, springsteen

It looks like words used in just about every song of the last 50 years.

lol @ "well"

It looks like words used in just about every song of the last 50 years.

"well" yeah, but the collective tilt is telling

It took him almost 30 years, but the proper followup to "Born In The USA" is finally here.

geir, you should write for rolling stone. you have a knack for meaningless "observations" that could be nicely integrated into a promotional campaign.

LOL @ "highway" in that word cloud

title track on this is awesome.

"Wrecking ball" title track is not awesome. More like formula

You guys get on the same page please so I know if I need to bother with this. All this "this is great", "this is awful", "this is awesome", "this is formula" is not helping AT ALL.