Bruce Springsteen - Wrecking Ball Review
Bruce Springsteen There is a stock rule of thumb that when America and the world are in crisis, one man will be there to sing about it with a truth and honesty that many wouldn’t be able to pull off, and a lot more wouldn’t dare to try. Bruce Springsteen.
The working class New Jersey boy who has stood for the last forty years as one of the few artists who can encompass the world around us in 60 minutes of music better than anyone else is now doing it again with his fifteenth studio album, Wrecking Ball.
From the opening We Take Care of Our Own, it is clear that this is not the same type of album as his previous Working On A Dream. The powerful opening drumbeat and waiting guitar, leading into a hook of violins, is Bruce returning to the driven rock sound that he first brought with 2002’s The Rising and the reunion of the E Street Band.
Springsteen has forever been writing songs that, while seemingly pro-American to the uninitiated, hide a deep resentment and truth about the reality of the American Dream. We Take Care of Our Own contains a chorus that joins Born in The USA as one that will be misinterpreted for years to come. “Wherever this flag’s flown/We take care of our own.” The Boss sings patriotically. However, listen to the verses and it becomes quickly apparent that this is not a deluded Bruce patting his country on the back. “There ain’t no help, the cavalry stayed home/ There ain’t no one hearing the bugle blowin’” You’re on your own is the meaning behind the song. We will look after ours, it’s up to you to get on and look after yours. And that is the dark vein running through most of the album, even behind some rather jovial music.
Springsteen has always played around with different styles. He toyed with gospel music when he found religion in the early 90s, moved onto hard rock in the 00s and in the middle he gave us some irish folk with the Seeger sessions. Wrecking Ball combines all of these, a political mission statement and so much more to create one of the richest tapestries in Springsteen’s long and prolific career.
Following the opening track, Easy Money combines a soulful, Celtic tune with a thudding drum beat as well as soaring guitar solos to tell the story of a couple of chancers about to go “on the town looking for easy money.” In these hard times, people resort to many means to get by, and through all the happy-clappy antics of the E Street Band, there is a series tale being told here. A similarly dower chain-gang dirge follows in Shackled and Drawn, but once again the powerful bass drum of Max Weinberg lifts this song and draws from the Seeger Sessions manifesto that no matter how bad things are, you can always have a damn good singsong about it to get through.
Jack of All Trades brings in a waltz beat to a slow burning story about the plight of the unemployed. The thought-provoking lyrics and quiet piano are almost too much to take, and when a sole trumpet kicks in it’s enough to tip you over the edge, but it isn’t long before Springsteen pulls us back up for The Death of My Hometown, another strong beat-driven piece which gives the first real gospel taste, along with a penny whistle melody. Springsteen turns his vocal to something ruggedly Irish as a man describing how he has watched everything crash down thanks to greed and money.
Weinberg once again puts his foot to good use in This Depression, in which Springsteen sings in a low register against a haunting ethereal melody of voices and a Nils Lofgren guitar solo that sounds like the doors of heaven themselves opening up to usher us in.
Then comes on of the tracks that is already familiar to Springsteen fans; title track Wrecking Ball. Written as a send off to the Giant’s Stadium in New Jersey, which was torn down in 2010, Springsteen manages to keep the meaning of the original lyrics but also draws on the “wrecking ball” that has levelled much of world’s economy in the last few years. “Hold tight to your anger/Don’t fall to your fears”, Springsteen bellows before launching into a rousing “Hard times come/Hard times go/only to come again” lead in to a mariachi band finish that has you almost seeing crowds dancing in the flames as the world burns around them.
Little love song You’ve Got It harks back to the Born In The USA sessions, and anyone who has tracked down the outtakes from those sessions and songs like Sugarland, will recognise the echo-laden vocal which sees Bruce sounding like he’s twenty years younger. The song itself is inconsequential, but is a solid song.
If anyone had suggested that a female would appear on a Bruce Springsteen track there are many who would accuse the Boss of jumping on a seemingly more popular bandwagon, but in this slow “Streets of Philedelphia” sounding track there is nothing forced or out of place. And this is where the album begins to turn. By the short rap section at the end, and the arrival of a gospel choir to sing out the hook over a sample of Springsteen yelling “I’m a soldier”, this has become a song of hope, leading to the light at the end of the tunnel, and leads into what is the outstanding track on an album that barely puts a foot wrong.
Land of Hope And Dreams became a concert closer for Springsteen’s reunion tour and again in a number of subsequent tours. On Wrecking Ball it finally finds its place on an album, and it seems unlikely it would have had quite the same impact if included in any album before this one. From the opening solo vocals, through a short drum loop and gospel chorus, the tearing guitar riff and thunderous, military snare drum beat that ushers the song in is pretty much worth the admission fee alone. Springsteen has taken a song that fans have known for years and turned it into a completely different beast, an anthem of hope for the times we live in. For long-time Springsteen fans, it also marks the final appearance of Clarence Clemons on saxophone, and it strikes a poignant chord.
And Springsteen has one final gem in We Are Alive, a religion filled song that begins with an acoustic guitar and gradually welcomes in a “Ring of Fire” type country/mariachi tune that celebrates the ideals of life and the possibilities that lay ahead in the world.
Wrecking Ball is not going to convert the Springsteen bashers out there, who question how a man in his position can sing for the working man, but for everyone else, this could quickly surge up lists of favourite Bruce tracks and albums as the Boss returns with his State of the World address for the here and now. We now wait with baited breath for The Boss to hit the UK for just four concert dates in Sunderland, Manchester, The Isle of Wight Festival and Hard Rock Calling.