The Boss gets back to work
Published: March 07, 2012 http://www2.the-burg.com/entertainment/2012/mar/07/bruce-springsteen-gets-back-work-wrecking-ball-ar-1745822/
Bruce Springsteen, Wrecking Ball (Columbia)
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| WORKING IT: Springsteen take up the populist cause once again |
It's not easy being Bruce Springsteen. Sure, by almost any measure, he's one of the most massively and persistently successful musicians of our time, a bona fide household name who can count himself as one of the few performers capable of filling stadiums. He’s got an enviable legacy that's afforded him the artistic license to do more or less as he pleases, from chasing the ghost of Steinbeck's Tom Joad, as he did on a critically acclaimed 1995 solo album, to celebrating the legacy of folksinger Pete Seeger, a project he undertook in 2006. Those are just a few of the perks that come with being The Boss.
And yet, Springsteen has toiled diligently to retain his status as a working man's rock star — a populist progressive in standard-cut Levi's with an abiding respect for our servicemen, our service sector, and the regular folks who make the factories run. He's a prophet of the crumbling American dream, a true believer in the humble virtues of a job well done and the value of a hard day's labor, even if his portfolio probably looks more like Mitt Romney's than Joe the Plumber's.
Springsteen cannily addressed this conundrum early in his career by treating rock stardom as something akin to a blue-collar job, sweating his way through epic performances until his buddies in the E Street Band would literally have to pick him up off the stage for a final encore. Then, with 1982’s pared-down Nebraska, he stumbled upon strategy for longevity that has allowed him to remain true to his populist ethos without forsaking his stake in anthemic, E Street theatrics. He’s kept critics happy by revisiting the anguished Americana of Nebraska on The Ghost of Tom Joad and Devils & Dust, while reuniting regularly with the E Street crew to please his core constituency, as he has once again with the new Wrecking Ball.
To his credit, Springsteen's never articulated a clear line between stardom and social activism. But that has created problems, most notably when Ronald Reagan co-opted "Born In the U.S.A.," a damning fist-pumping anthem that details the dismal plight of Vietnam War vets, for stump speeches without fully vetting the lyrics.
That episode may have given Springsteen pause; for a time, at least, he seemed somewhat gun shy when it came to bringing politics to the E Street party. But a righteous anger has been simmering in Springsteen’s heart. And he comes out shooting from the hip on Wrecking Ball, an album that takes aim at Wall Street “fat cats,” predatory bankers, and modern-day “robber barons.”
There’s more to Wrecking Ball than just calling out bad guys. As was the case on “Born In the U.S.A.” — the song and the album — Springsteen is walking a fine line here between a kind of stoic patriotism and gut feeling that things just ain’t right. That’s where it all gets a bit tricky. Against an imposing wall of thundering drums, massing guitars, surging synths, Springsteen takes stock of “hearts turned to stone full of good intentions,” while wearily celebrating the solidarity of the American people on the disc’s first single, “We Take Care of Our Own.” The song also cops a line from “America the Beautiful” and finds Bruce waving the flag “from Chicago to New Orleans/From the muscle to the bone/From the shotgun shack to the Superdome,” until it’s not entirely clear where he’s headed, except, perhaps, to the Superdome for a big gig.
Not that there’s anything wrong with that. It’s just that, unless you listen super carefully to the lyrics, the song has a rather jingoistic veneer. Add to that the super big-budget studio production and, well, let’s just say that one could very easily imagine a triumphant Mitt Romney bounding to the stage to accept the Republican nomination to a bombastic tune like this.
Subtlety has never been an E Street staple. Heavy handed is their dominant mode. That’s just fine for the stadium rockers here. But it gets a little weird when they crash in on a rootsier number like “Easy Money,” a tune that begins as an acoustic foot-stomper before the band amp it up to something resembling a hi-tech hoedown. And there’s something a little off about the gloss they apply to the grit of “Shackled and Drawn,” an ode to the old world virtues of a sweaty shirt and a hard day’s work filled with lots of whooping, hollering, and an oddly synthetic sounding fiddle. “Up on banker’s hill the party’s going strong,” Springsteen growls, “Down here below we’re shackled and drawn.”
Songs are fictions set to music. And it’s every singer’s prerogative to inhabit any character he or she chooses. Indeed, from the freewheeling desperado in “Born to Run” to the conflicted cop in the Nebraska tune “Highway Patrolman,” Springsteen’s has had a great track record when it comes to bringing such fictions to life. But on Wrecking Ball he overreaches. He may empathize or even identify with the downtrodden denizens of “Shackled and Drawn.” But, let’s face it: even if he’s not part of the “party,” these days he lives a lot closer to “banker’s hill” than a “shotgun shack.”
That’s not to suggest that Springsteen’s disingenuous, only that he’s not as believable playing the role of the workingman as he once was. And, he needn’t force it. On “Jack of All Trades,” a stolid ballad built around lovely piano arpeggios and anchored by mournful organ tones, he delivers a moving meditation on the state of the world (“The banker man grows fat/The working man grows thin/It’s all happened before/And it’ll happen again”) from his own perspective, and it works.
In fact, Springsteen’s at his best here when he gets personal. “This is my confession/I need your heart in this depression,” he sings tenderly in the halting “This Depression.” It’s a simple sentiment that gives way to a searing guitar solo that just feels right. Similarly, “You’ve Got It,” another track that steers clear of redressing grievances, captures Springsteen at his most affecting, soulfully serenading a lover as he contemplates his own mortality.
Mostly, though, Wrecking Ball is about weathering through hard times, finding redemption in the process, and maybe even getting a little taste of transcendence in the end. Springsteen does he best to squeeze all of that into the 7-minute epic “Land of Hope and Dreams,” a huge production that echoes “Born to Run” and then moves beyond it, with a full gospel choir, looped beats, banjo, and a Sam Cooke sample joining an uplifting solo by late E Street Band sax player Clarence Clemons. Springsteen even manages to squeeze in a Civil Rights-era Curtis Mayfield allusion as he breathlessly races toward the finish line.
No, it’s not easy being Bruce. But maybe it doesn’t have to be as hard as he makes it sound on Wrecking Ball.
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