Bruce Springsteen - Classic or Dud ?

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

formula can be awesome. it is pretty awesome here.

Good piece here: http://www.avclub.com/articles/pays-to-be-the-boss-why-the-bruce-springsteen-busi,70462/

Stick with Springsteen's albums from the '70s and early 80s.

I don't think that anyone would argue that those albums are not better.

My fave Springsteen tour, btw, at least in my concert-going lifetime, was watching him behind "Devils & Dust," actually, when it was just him, a host of instruments and some 160 songs from his catalog, new, old, unreleased, rare, etc. He really made a case for the dustier corners of his career, and found neat ways to refresh the familiar. For instance, I like to post this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U4WKYtS4JDk

Tom Joad tour was legendary, too, and that album was dull dull dull.

Stick with Springsteen's albums from the '70s and early late 80s.

Great Jody Rosen review

Springsteen has always been a social realist—often, a brilliant one, with songs that captured the fine-grain texture of everyday lives. Here, though, he sounds like a socialist realist. The songs veer into proletarian kitsch: “Freedom, son, is a dirty shirt/ The sun on my face and my shovel in the dirt.” On his best records, Springsteen was simply a storyteller: He wrote about the white working class because that’s what interested him, that’s the world he knew best. In recent years, self-consciousness has taken hold; he’s never sounded so dutiful about his role as bard of the masses. Listening to Wrecking Ball, I was reminded of Preston Sturges’ Sullivan’s Travels, in which the successful Hollywood comedy director decides to make O, Brother Where Art Thou, a film that will capture the plight of the Great Depression downtrodden. In “Jack of All Trades” Springsteen intones: “I’ll hammer the nails, and I’ll set the stone/ I’ll harvest your crops when they’re ripe and grown … The banker man grows fat, the working man grows thin/ It’s all happened before and it’ll happen again.” O, brother.

http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/music_box/2012/03/bruce_springsteen_s_wrecking_ball_reviewed_.html

"We Take Care of Our Own" has a this kinda thing going on:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=boPhDRug_SQ
deny it if you can!

but the praise for an album so light on melody and so heavy on loops and stuff is very un-Geir

You mean "Born In The USA"? Becaus that album is also full of loops and ostinato based songs. It doesn't always work (the title track and "I'm On Fire" feel a bit too repetitive for me, although I loved the former at 14), but surprisingly often it does. Even a track as repetitive and mantra-like as "Darlington County" appeals to me in some mysterious way. And I think it is much about the ethusiasm and enerty. An enthusiasm and energy that has been largely absent from everything folloing, but which seems to be back on the current album.

Okay I actually really like this, at least compared to his last couple studio albums. Kinda surprised he left the studio version of "American Land" off the standard edition.

no Geir, he means he's surprised you like the new one

On his best records, Springsteen was simply a storyteller: He wrote about the white working class because that’s what interested him, that’s the world he knew best. In recent years, self-consciousness has taken hold; he’s never sounded so dutiful about his role as bard of the masses.

i call b.s. on this. sure, his lyrics on this new one may be a new shade of awful, but springsteen's persona as the bard of the working class was always constructed, always extremely self-consciously. in fact, you can hear him struggling toward it on his albums. his first two albums are something very different: self-consciously poetic, dylanesque, felliniesque, profligate with internal rhymes, metaphors, literary allusions... he begins to purge this w/ born to run. by the river bruce-as-we-know-him emerges. that's not to say he hasn't pursued variations on this ethos. arguably, with much of tunnel of love and the two 1992 albums, he sort of half casts-off some of it. but then it's back in full force w/ the ghost of tom joad.

all that to say that characterizing springsteen's arc from earnest, working-class balladeer to self-conscious Voice of the Volk is really wrong. he's just gotten cruder about it.

^^ booming

But a definition politicisation took place in the early 80s which wasn't present in the blue-collar narratives of the albums up to that point. Jody Rosen's saying that his sense of himself as spokesperson rather than observer has gotten too heavy. The Rising had that dutiful, rep-the-nation vibe - do you remember that NYT story about a passer-by shouting "We need you!" after 9/11? That feels like something that's happened in the last decade or so, with mixed results. The first two albums following his politicisation - Nebraska and Born in the USA - don't suffer from that tone because it still felt fresh to him then, like he was working stuff out and finding the right stories to tell. Every political message was channelled through characters and stories - less so now.

^^^

this, plus musically the songwriting feels more forced.

I call B.S. on this, too. The main issue is that the music is forced, yes. But this may be the first Springsteen album whose politics are explicit, not implicit. Bruce the passionate Persona may have imbued his music with a political edge, but I think even his most "political" material - "Nebraska," say, or certain tracks off BitUSA - aren't exactly strident and, despite the bombast of some of the music, are ctually kind of subtle and nuanced. Again, as I pointed out above, "Darkness on the Edge of Town," his first "political" album, and the first he made after Landau politicized him (ie made him read books), was largely written and constructed during the Ford administration and takes aim at no particular villains. The River, Nebraska, BitUSA ... it's a general malaise and disappointment he's tapping into. Ham-fisted or no, the new stuff is specific, and I have no problem with Springsteen going that route. He's working in a classic, direct folk tradition, and as much as the snob in me (the elite in me?) may not dig it, his heart is undeniably in the right place, and there's no one else doing what he's doing at the (literal) level he's doing it.

(And not to romantize it, anyone who has seen him live understands that we do need dudes like Bruce, to some extent. He may be the only performer I've ever seen able to totally unify tens of thousands of people, which is quite the trick and, as above, ever primed with an idealist potential.)

When has Springsteen not been political?

Never mind “Badlands” and “Born in the U.S.A” — what is “Thunder Road” if not the embrace of heterosexual manhood as defined by early sixties radio?

Obviously it depends on your definition of politics - all art is political from a certain angle - but he had no particular views on foreign policy and no real understanding of economics, ie the issues that he later embraced, when he made Born to Run - that came later. That's not a criticism - I think Thunder Road is perfectly fine without macroeconomic insight. But it does make sense to say that his worldview changed significantly in the late 70s/early 80s. I actually thought it was after Darkness but I might have misremembered that. The Dave Marsh book on Springsteen in the 80s goes into detail about exactly how this awakening happened, via various books that Landau gave him.

When has Springsteen not been political?

― Exile in lolville (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn),

His before meeting Jon Landau and Dave Marsh stuff. But I am guessing you may wish to use a more expansive definition of "political" and even include those early releases with their Dylanesque wordplay.

Here's Nabisco turning the lyrics of the latest one into a speech:

http://www.vulture.com/2012/03/bruce-springsteens-stump-speech.html

We've gone over this. Just because Springsteen talks about the underclass or the economy does not make him political, necessarily. He's painting portraits of a certain segment of the country, true, but that's general reflection and observation, not a platform or angle; "Badlands" is every bit the "I'm going to get out of this town and make it" anthem that "Born to Run" is, but there is nothing beyond generalities in that song, as awesome as it is. It may make you want to conquer the world, or shake your fist at the government, or rue the death of the American dream, but that stuff is all projected. Even "BitUSA" toes a certain ironic line, but never comes right out and picks a side. That's one o his gifts, I'd say, that balance, and that's perhaps why the new one feels so ... unbalanced.

And yeah, Springsteen was definitely not consistently political on stage until at least "The River." And even then, it bears repeating that he did not explicitly endorse a candidate or get involved in a campaign until Kerry.

I haven't heard the new album, but in re that Rosen review, or at least the lines quoted in it, it sounds like it's less a problem of being "too political" than not being politically smart and engaged. All this stuff about who grows the grain versus who eats it, and shovels in the dirt and so forth, is some kind of Industrial Age view of capitalism that doesn't have a lot to do with American/Western working-class life now. For all its melodic limpness and Depression echoes, Tom Joad at least showed an attempt to grapple with realities of the '90s: immigration, methamphetamine, the explosion of the prison-industrial complex. If the new album is really just a lot of would-be Wobbly anthems, that strikes me as less a problem of politics than nostalgia.

That seems pretty accurate. It's a weird nostalgia for a more idealistic political time, without sounding necessarily of the '60s. Though as snapshot political outburst, I wish it was more like, maybe, Neil Young's "Living with War."

what is “Thunder Road” if not the embrace of heterosexual manhood as defined by early sixties radio?

Alfred, I actually remember reading an essay in a book edited by ... I forget which former/current Rolling Stone editor. Anyway, it was about sexual ambiguity in Springsteen songs, and actually their less than forthright heterosexuality. Worth a chuckle or two. Want to say it was predicated on the ambiguous nicknames of his characters?

From choosing the point of view to the subject self the act of painting a portrait – even offering reflections and observations, as you said, Josh – is political.

* er, the subject ITSELF

Alfred, I actually remember reading an essay in a book edited by ... I forget which former/current Rolling Stone editor. Anyway, it was about sexual ambiguity in Springsteen songs, and actually their less than forthright heterosexuality. Worth a chuckle or two.

haha yeah – this rings a bell

xp OTM re: the nostalgia problem. Modelling yourself on the Guthrie/Seeger glory days in 2012 just sounds hokey and irrelevant, which is death to getting a political message across.

But idk if I believe "getting a political message across" is one of Bruce's main goals, I think, if anything, his politics are just a tool in his back of tricks, if that makes sense. He's just savvy enough to know that, again in 2012, politics is "big" again and he needs to use it to connect to his perceived audience.

I mean that strain has been there since the 80s, but its seems even more relevant now. My thoughts are kinda scattered on this today, sry, so I'm not sure if I'm saying exactly what I'm trying to get across. I think Bruce's critics are more concerned about his politics than he is, basically.

I don't think that's the case on this album at all. One thing I don't doubt is his sincerity.

Well I wasn't really saying he was insincere, I do think he believes what he sings! I just don't think he goes into each new album intending to be "more" or "less" political, its just a common thread that he taps into wrt his songwriting. This time he seems to have tapped into it a little more than usual, but again, I don't think "being political" is one of his main goals.

I think he just kinda is by nature of what he writes about and critics (on both sides of the fence) have a field day projecting their politics onto it.

I'm divided between about four tasks this morning, so nevermind me really I guess.

He's writing more of an anthemic "we" in these songs, the we of "We Shall Overcome," which is different from his standard short-story mode.

That's for sure. This stuff is less observational and more ... motivational?

Was it discussed upthread that the new one was reportedly originally made as a sodden Bruce with guitar record, but was remade (retrofitted?) as a fully electric project? That's happened before, of course ...

Oh, and Alfred, the essay is in the book "Present Tense," edited by Anthony DeCurtis. It's written by Martha Nell Smith and is called "Sexual Mobilities In Bruce Springsteen: Performance As Commentary."

"Gambling man rolls the dice, workingman pays the bill
it’s still fat and easy up on banker’s hill
up on banker’s hill, the party’s going strong
down here below we’re shackled and drawn"

Not much projection required there jon.

Do you mean me? My point was that there's no projection need on the *new* stuff. But Bruce's classic rebel rousers and barn burners - like "Badlands" - are far more ambiguous than the feeling they provoke. Speaking of which:

http://www.mv.com/ipusers/richbreton/lrgjpg2/HTTS_LR_ctr6.jpg

Jim Cullen:

"...Springstenn has never exhibited the kind of sexual flamboyance of the Rolling Stones or David Bowie... but his performances are marked by a surprising amount of sexual subversion. It is most apparent in the case of his relationship with Clarence Clemons, with whom his contact ranged from their affectionate pose on the cover of Born To Run to the exuberant kisses they routinely exchanged during live shows. Springsteen showed similar intimacy with guitarist Steve van Zandt in the way they gazed into each other`s eyes while sharing a microphone throughout any giving evening. Such intimacy, sexual or otherwise, diminishes markedly with the release of Darkness On The Edge Of Town in 1978. It`s not altogether clear why that happens... "

(Typos courtesy whomever transcribed that)

Not much projection required there jon.

Yeah, I was really having trouble trying to articulate what I was trying to say. Basically, I do think Springsteen IS political and he is 100% sincere in what he says. My comment about projection was that I think critics tend to make it a BIGGER deal that it needs to be. Like, yes, Springsteen is political, but thats not what his music is all about, not the ultimate end game. He paints pictures of a certain segment of America and, right now esp given the recession, politics plays a HUGE part of that segment right now (whether directlty or indirectly). I think Bruce is more interested in painting these pictures than he is in scoring political points or advancing an agenda (although thats there too, its just not his end game, imho). I'm kind of blabbering on here, but I hope my main point gets across.

Ham-fisted or no, the new stuff is specific

I would actually argue that for the most part the reason the new stuff is perceived as more overtly political is because it's fundamentally non-specific. That is, it's on a level of generality and abstraction that it can't be taken as the kind storytelling in which he had previously couched his (mostly kind of inchoate) politics. But that doesn't mean that the lyrics are particularly sharp or even coherent. In fact the same generality that causes people to perceive them as "statements" makes them kind of fall down as any kind of real political rhetoric--indeed in the worst cases ("We Take Care of Our Own," which isn't a horrible song overall, just a horribly mixed/mastered one) it's basically just meaningless. The Coldplay syndrome in other words -- not that I really wish to mention them in the same breathe.

BTW I don't think it quite works--in this discussion--to lower the threshold for what constitutes a "political" pop star --e.g. by saying that "choosing a subject" is a political act. I mean, it is, in a broad sense. But when critics single Bruce out for being "political," they mean something more than that. They mean that his songs evince anger about broad economic and political realities, and even (on occasion) seem to place blame.

ok in honesty i overstate the "generality" of his lyrics. there are some fairly specific themes that emerge from the new one (which yes i've listened to finally). i guess i was describing his recent songs at their worst, not at their best.

although the onscreen lyrics in the video for WTCoOO are kind of unforgivable.

ok yeah the lyrics to this one are really ringing "coldplay" bells in my head. "where's the work that will set my soul free?" huh?

and maybe this is obvious but he seems to absorbed the influence of his own admirers, like arcade fire etc. i don't think that's to the bad, although i have no time for arcade fire.

if he could only write another song like this :-(

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=129kuDCQtHs&feature=relmfu

"Dancing in the Dark" is one of the all-time great Trojan horse songs - a last minute addition at the record label's request about not wanting to write a hit song, fretting about the machinations of pop stardom. Worth recalling that our man' Bruce, like Fogerty, has never had a number one hit. Not "Dancing" (for a good reason), not "Born to Run" (not even close), not "Hungry Heart" (though it was a breakthrough). "Streets of Philadelphia" went to number 9.

love that it's one of his weird minimal synth songs

i am probably the only person who wanted an entire album of "streets of philadelphia" and "secret garden"-esque songs, which i already half-have with tunnel of love, i guess

yeah "Secret Garden" is if i'm being honest probably my favorite song Bruce has written in the last 20 years