Bruce Springsteen

A double album that seals a memorable period for the songwriter from Freehold, New Jersey, a perfect summation of everything he'd expressed in his previous work (from "The Wild, The Innocent and The E-Street Shuffle" to "Darkness on the Edge of Town") and of what would emerge in the records to come: the sense of powerlessness and defeat in the face of life, regret over a past that can't be changed, yet despite everything, despite the dark wounds dug deep by "Nebraska", despite the fear of the darkness surrounding us, there remains the hope placed in dancing, in the ability to keep a small match burning by whose light one can dream, even while numbed by the cold and on the verge of letting go. The whole of Bruce Springsteen's poetics is summed up here, running through the grooves of "The River", an atypical work for its time, so out of step in shunning the dark, gothic-tinged influences and the paranoid electronics of certain new wave in order to remain firmly anchored to a conception of rock so classic that it hasn't aged a single day. More than twenty years on, one can only envy those who'll get to open this treasure chest of wonders for the first time and feel its warmth, experience the ecstasy of imagination unleashed, of the body moving freely and seductively, wrapped in the catharsis of dance. And be moved in the shadow of a hope that never seems to fade, not even in the thickest darkness.

The American artist's backing is nothing short of astonishing: the E-Street Band is perhaps one of the tightest, most unbeatable rock machines of all time. Clarence Clemons on saxophone, Roy Bittan on piano, Steve Van Zandt on guitar, Max Weinberg on drums, Danny Federici on organ and Garry Tallent on bass chisel out marvels, both in the power of the most irreverent, devil-may-care rock and in the bitter sorrow of the ballads, all managing to shine equally brightly, free of any individualist showmanship.

A chronicler of America's working class, short on money and unable to bring about any change to their condition, Bruce Springsteen strings together lyrics that often clash with the driving thrust of the music, something that a few years later would give rise to the greatest misunderstanding in rock history: the Boss recast as a Reaganite court poet, the supreme defender of the era's right-wing masculinity, an apologist for neo-liberal ideals. Instead, it's in broken lives, in the hardships born of not having enough means to fulfill one's dreams, in the pitiless act of watching them rot away in the mire of non-being, that the rocker's secret lies hidden, in the inescapable chain binding him to his own suffering ("Who'll ease the sadness, who's gonna quiet the pain" he sings in "The Ties That Bind"), in the gaze cast toward a better future that never arrives ("But you're reminded every night that you been judged and handed life down in the Jackson Cage").

The warmth of a new, pulsing love grants brief moments of happiness ("Two Hearts"), youthful determination to change the world lifts the spirit and offers up dreams ("Independence Day"), but disillusionment never quite vanishes ("But in the end true love can't be no fairytale", as he puts it in "I Wanna Marry You"). The only freedom left seems to be the flight of imagination alongside another lost soul ("Sherry we can run with our arms open before the tide") and the cyclical, merciless return to that river where dreams and promises once flowed abundant, a metaphor for a life drained dry by apathy and daily hardship. "The River" (the song) closes the first half of the record in a way that's as beautiful as it is moving and sincere; in a few words carried by Bittan's piano, Springsteen sketches two whole lives, like so many others: the meeting, the love, the premature pregnancy, the hasty marriage under the community's cruel gaze, the fading of feeling, the obsession of a past that keeps coming back: "Now those memories come back to haunt me, they haunt me like a curse", he sings through tears, even as he knows that the secret to going on living lies precisely in that past, in the melancholy born of standing beside a dried-up river filled by art.

The second half seems to grow even darker, closing in on an intimacy of the heart that nonetheless kindles real emotion. The resigned weariness of "Point Blank", where "you wake up and you're dying and you don't even know what from"; the rebirth of feeling no matter one's age in "Fade Away"; its suffocation by boredom in "Stolen Car"; escape as a possible redemption in the gospel-tinged "Drive All Night"; the cruelty of a fate that all too often steals away the little we have ("Wreck on the Highway"). Still, there's no shortage of brighter, more joyful moments, above all a "Ramrod" that live will spark with its irresistible irony.

The art of the wandering American rocker drags us for over eighty minutes through suburban ruins and men bent at the knees by the weight of existence and impossible dreamed-of futures. In the end, though, there's always that car parked out there, maybe to be stolen, but ready to speed off into the night, down new highways toward better worlds. Pure poetry.

Ride the wave of great music

Add OndaRock to your favorite sources on Google Discover. Don't miss our reviews, milestones and latest news straight in your feed.

Follow on Google

10/11/2006