Springsteen: Wrecking Ball Review

Bruce Springsteen's new album "Wrecking Ball" is, without a whisper of a doubt in my mind, the strongest, most cohesive, best-sounding album he has produced in the past 11 years.  That I would argue to anyone who cares to hear me rant, really.  What blows me away about this album is that it is probably my favorite Springsteen album post-"Born in the USA".


Nah, definitely.


The beginnings of my espousing to others the magic and the brilliance of Springsteen came when I became a convert in the late 90's, listening, re-listening, crying to, pouring over, and attempting sorry re-hashings of the core of his catalogue: "Born to Run", "Darkness on the Edge of Town", "Tunnel of Love", and, of course, "Nebraska".  Unfortunately (to me) the beginnings of my apostleship also coincided with his re-emergence with The Rising and his subsequent run of ho-hum albums since then.  Each new release brought with it the promise of being the new "Darkness" or the new "River", only to disappoint me when I didn't really enjoy the album as much as I thought I would or should and the rest of the world exalted his majesty and his brilliant touch again.


The albums since "The Rising" include: "Devils & Dust", "Magic", and "Working on a Dream", as well as the folk cover album "We Shall Overcome: the Seeger Sessions", and "The Promise", a release of unrecorded tracks from the late 70's.  I enjoyed them all, and have come to appreciate "Magic" especially, but each release left me feeling empty and with the thought that Springsteen was trying to stretch himself and coming up short.  Meanwhile, the critics would rave about how "eclectic" his new sound was now that he was incorporating drum loops or how "multi-cultural" he had become because he had some black folk singing backup about God.


It was all pretty annoying to me, because I knew deep down that he had more in him, and that now that I was a full-blown Springsteen apostle, I didn't have my "own" album to write about.


I think I do now.


"Wrecking Ball" is fantastic.  It is loud, fun, cynical, mean, tough, smart, pensive, and timeless.  Springsteen is penning lyrics like he always has, lyrics that speak to both the current time and all time.  Yes, the album is political.  Overtly political, even.  Get over it.  Springsteen has been writing political songs since the 70's and has been outspoken about his politics since the 90's.  Get over it, critics.  It is just a part of his music at this point, and you can take it or leave it as you choose.  I simply get sick of hearing the same review every time a new Bruce album hits - "Well, the songs are rockin', but be warned: he's a Demmycrat!".  So what.


I believe in the music - and I guess that's what hit me first.  Outside of "Rocky Ground" (admittedly weak) the songs ring true and genuine - not forced integration, but true homogenization.  He has taken his eclectic experiments from the past decade and welded them into a goddamn wrecking ball, and my jaded E-Street ears can tell.  


I have to admit there were times in the past few years where I thought that maybe Springsteen had truly past his prime and that while the earnestness and the intention were there, the craft and the passion were not.  This album takes that theory and blows it out of the water.  


It has it all (at least the things I like in a Bruce album):


1.  The Radio Rocker That Everyone Likes That I'm Kinda Lukewarm On - "We Take Care of Our Own"
2.  The Fucked-up Anti-Corpratism Mellow Nebraska-ish Song: "Jack of All Trades"
3.  The Glory-Glory-Hallelujah Ending Song: "Land of Hope and Dreams"
4.  The Boot-Stomper That You Don't Expect to Get Stuck In Your Head:  "Shackled and Drawn"
5.  The Sleeper Song That I Think Nobody Gets But Me:  "This Depression"
6.  The Ultra-Clever Throw-Away Pop Song Just Because He Can:  "You've Got It"


Simple formula, right?


"Wrecking Ball" is the first Springsteen album since, well, "Darkness", that made me feel the way "Darkness" did the first time I heard it. 


And that's about as high praise as I can give.

Main St. Sterling

Yesterday I spent the day driving around Northern Virginia making sales calls, which as you can imagine, was just about the most fun I've ever had in my life. Actually, it wasn't all that bad, but the absolute highlight of the day was my stop in Sterling, VA - I had never been there before, but I was taken with it.

I'm sure that there is a 'real' section of Sterling, with a main street and houses that were built before last year, but the part of Sterling that I saw was the brilliant fake city/main street that they had built as sort of a giant outdoor mall. I've seen this type of thing before, but never to this level. The 'town' has its own streets, benches, lampposts, mailboxes, the whole nine yards - but it is all fake, and built around the franchise stores that they were able to get to move in. Plus, for good measure, there were some pre-fab cookie-cutter townhouses and condos around the 'outskirts' where people could live when they aren't getting coffee from Starbucks and shopping at Bed, Bath & Beyond.

Its all very surreal, and I guess I don't really have anything against it, except for the fact that they are trying to re-create a small-town, main street style atmosphere with the very corporations that destroyed the real small-town main streets.

In my hometown of Waynesboro, PA, we actually used to have a Main St. with real shops that people actually went to and purchased goods and services. There was a laundromat, a JC Penny, a McCrory's, a shoe store, a hardware store, a bakery, two banks, a candy store, a couple of kid's clothing stores, a library, town hall, a comic book/baseball card store, the whole nine yards. It has steadily been in decline since I was about 8, thanks to a Wal-Mart, Applebee's, and other corporate stores moving to the surrounding area, and now all that remains is a shitty Chinese restaurant and a pizza place that no one ever goes to.

I guess that's part of life and the ebb and flow of free market economies, but I feel sorry for kids that are growing up in Sterling, VA, whose only experience of a small-town main street is one that is populated by AT&T, Baja Fresh, Lowe's, and Pizzaria Uno.

Ah well. At least I still have 24.