Album Review - BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN

Album reviews by ACID
Artiste: BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN
Album: Wrecking Ball
Label: Columbia/Sony Music

WHAT do we say next of America’s favourite working class hero, Bruce Springsteen? He’s sung all the gritty tales of hard knocks, rough living, gruffer emotions for so long. Even more so in the shadow of the fading of the American dream for so many living there, Springsteen’s songs become all the more touching, all the more poignant.

Wrecking Ball opens with the unapologetic-ally jangly, prideful We Take Care of Our Own. But upon listening closely, you get the feeling that a grim layer of strength and fortitude runs through the entire album like a fine underlying thread (as they do for many of his efforts). The second track is truly the one that opens to a wonderful panoply matching lyrics of the hardy, working man and some unexpected pairings – a hearty fiddle in Easy Money and a rather down-home foot stomp-er Shackled and Drawn.

Jack of All Trades is sorrowful, moving – and all beautiful. Springsteen’s vocals lose no power and retains the full gamut of masculine emotion. “We stood the drought, now we’ll stand the flood”,” he sings, and the listener bears the weight of the full honesty of his delivery. Death to my Hometown, again, is another interesting juxtaposition – all the woes of the grittiest of the hoi polloi but put in a gruff, brave (oh, how brave) delivery that is rousing and inspiring.

The late Clarence Clemmons, the saxophonist of the E Street Band is specially featured in a heartfelt Land of Hope and Dreams as well. Springsteen also pays fond tribute to his old friend and fellow musician at the end.

Look out for two bonus tracks, Swallowed up (In the Belly of the Whale), which is not a pseudo-Jonah-esque paean but rather, almost part dirge and part hymn, of the loss of innocence and confidence, even as it clings on to the faintest of hopes.

Wrecking Ball is another winner,  and perhaps one of Springsteen’s strongest albums about modern urban Americana ever.  It’s unapologetic, grim, tough, honest. And completely gorgeous.