The Blanding of Bruce

The new Bruce album is far inferior to his old ones (hardly a surprise), however, I cannot stop listening to it since I've worn out all the old ones by memorizing all the lyrics, solos, key changes, and cracks in Bruce's voice, so having some new Bruce to listen to, even if it is a retread or emulation of his great past work is better than any other new music I've heard in months. Which leads to the problem: my repeated, semi-obsessive listens of this new album and my chronic-obsessive relationship to his old albums magnifies the divide between the two.

The greatness of Bruce begins intermittenly on Wild & The Innocent and extends through Born to Run, Darkness, River, Nebraska, (Born in the USA is annoying but still good) and some of Tunnel of Love. His achievement was to fashion the feelings of workingclass people into anthems and hymns of longing, companionship, and redemption. He did this through character study and the pathos derived from immaculate orchestration, at turns joyful, somber, defiant, and knowing.

The overring factor that hoisted Bruce to greatness was his lyric detail. After the initial listen to the overwhelming power, and the operatic subtext, of the rythmns and voices of the E Street Band, the second and third and fourth listen revealed Bruce's lyrics as the harbinger to the emotional depth of his music and therefore the creative force behind his band's sound and essence.

When Bruce sings "I'll be on that hill with everything I've got" on Darkness or "you can hide 'neath your covers and study your pain" on Thunder Road or "it was Frank they said" from Highway Patrolman or "take a knife and cut this pain from my heart" on Promised Land (there are hundreds of examples), it is a soul-stirring experiences because the people seem real in their lyric description and the band carries their emotional weight through the song.

For some reason, Bruce has lost that rigorous lyricism, which in turn has lessened his bands power, in subsequent albums. The Rising was good, but it got stuck on sweeping celestial metaphors and "this kiss" repetitions, and Devils in Dust was obscure and lacking any melodies and boring. This new album trades hard-worn depictions of people struggling through life for general details sewed together around a more general theme. "Living in The Future" is about concern about what might happen in our now uncertain collective future. "Magic" is about deception (ne governmental). "Girls in their Summer Clothes" is about opportunities forsaken. All very noble, but no longer entrenched with the people most directly affected by those dilemmas.

This is probably due to the old, successful artist paradox. From deserved success, Bruce got to see the world and meet more people and visit more places than most anybody, and with his money began to live in a great big fenced in home. (He probably made 20 million of this album.) Bruce's exceedingly vast exposure to the world and its complications and its sheer numbers as well as him settling down created a disconnect between him and the common person. He is no longer the struggling musician playing in the bars for the people just like himself, wanting success and solace and good times, experiences which fueled the material for his amazing run of 70's and 80's albums. Success took those Stone Pony faces from the front row singing along, and multiplied them by the millions, obscuring them when he toured in different cities, in different countries, for years, and soon, when he began to slow down in the early 1990's and he was rich and a stadium juggernaut, the edges were all dulled, but his Jersey roots remained, which is probably why we now get albums about working class, American struggles without knowing how it really feels.