Album Reviews
Movies
Concert Reviews

Top 10
Resources
Contact Us

A new Bruce Springsteen album is a rare item on the shelves these days. Since The Ghost of Tom Joad in 1995 we have had a box set of out takes and a live album but nothing new. Eight years Bruce, fella! So when an album does arrive it is always eagerly anticipated. Ears have been whetted especially moist for The Rising. The first album he has recorded with the E Street Band in nigh on twenty years and a tour at the end of the last millennium that included two new songs that suggested a classic may be in the offing. "41 Shots" had all the drama and controversial look at the streets of New York that makes Bruce cutting edge and "Land of Hope And Dreams" continued the born to run journey towards some kind of heavenly place. Light and dark in a brewing cocktail that only Bruce can shake.

The Rising lets no one down. It is his most commercial piece of work since the monster, hit filled, last E Street Band album Born In the USA. You can hear it on the radio and in every big stadium that the E Streeters fill in the world tour that kicks off this autumn (fall). As he repeats the line “waiting for the shout from the crowd” on maybe the most familiar tune of all, Mary’s Place, you can hear the crowd and yourself shouting back at the microphone held out in that Springsteenesque connection. Without doubt The Rising will be deemed a return to the halcyon days and will not disappoint those who, during the last reunion tour, took a slower stroll back to the more feverishly energetic times when Bruce was the Boss of the world.

And yet one has to wonder has the clash of unmitigated circumstances that birthed this album left the album caught between a rock and a painfully hard place. The tragedy of September 11th hit Springsteen between that reunion tour and this new album. As the rock poet laureate of New Jersey, within easy sight of the New York skyline forever changed that terrible morning, Springsteen was obliged to deal with the aftermath. How would it be possible to untangle the shock and articulate the new horizon of American life and understanding of death and keep the anthemic sound of a band designed to be celebratory? Surely a Ghost of Tom Joad backdrop would better tell such harrowing stories?

It was certainly a challenge but one that in the main has been won. As a whole the album sounds like a big rocker of a piece with Max Weinberg’s drums whacking and thumping and the guitars ringing out much more in your face than any previous E Street album. The sound is as full as anything Bruce has done before and bringing in Brendan O’Brien, best known for his work with Pearl Jam, as producer has been to make something new out of the most familiar of rock sounds. There are a few places where this fails. The fiddle in "Waiting On a Sunny Day" is a great new twist but sounds like what Springsteen wannabe John Mellencamp was doing 20 years ago. Following those who follow you is a little bizarre and then on the big experiment of Pakistani players on "World’s Apart" the song eventually merges into a Celtic sound and Big Country’s Stuart Adamson seems to take over the vocals from beyond the grave. Again it is brave and different but a little unconvincing.

The sense of big sound is deceptive though. There is the foot stomping stadium strut of "Counting On a Miracle," the traditional rock bluster of "Further On Up the Road" and "Lonesome Day" but the songs of loss in the World Trade Centre are much more in keeping with the sound of "Streets of Philadelphia." Particularly poignant are "You’re Missing," "Into the Fire," and "Empty Sky." Springsteen has got inside the souls of the grieving and though the songs might be accused of being in similar in that theme it is the story of so many New Yorkers and every little angle is enlightening and in some ways brings a healing.

The album indeed is full of hope and light in the midst of the most despairing and darkest time. Even there Springsteen does not over step the mark by telling the mourners to catch a grip and look at the bright side of life. It is a remarkable juxtaposition of sadness and joy, doubt and faith, death and resurrection. In that way the spirit has religious connotations in mining the day for belief but there are also specific pointers to God and transcendent hope no more so than on the album closer "My City In Ruins," written remarkably about Asbury Park many months before September 2001, which is a prayer for love and faith and strength, for all the things manifested in the 14 songs that precede it.

It is an interesting new destination in the spiritual journey that Springsteen has travelled since the nuns who taught him put him in a trash can. His early songs were of Old Testament characters and a judgement of doom kind of God. By Human Touch he had learned that it was not so much about escape as community. Fatherhood then led him to talk a lot about grace which he would say much of Ghost of Tom Joad was about. Now here he is, as his people are, in need of asking the big questions and seeking the big answers and prayers are almost common place. Resurrection is more than hoped for but believed in.

Quite a journey and this album is a stellar addition to the canon. It is more than good but one might also question if he has the ability to dream up new sounds like U2 or recreate his template like recent Bob Dylan. Maybe this is as good as it gets.

Steve Stockman 9/8/2002