Bruce Springsteen – Wrecking Ball

With The Rising Bruce set his songs to the tragedy triggered by the events of September 11th, while Devils & Dust was a direct response to the re-election of the most miserable President this nation has ever known ... and in all the years I’ve been following Mr. Springsteen [and those years go back to the Main Point in Ardmore, and The Stone Pony in Jersey] there’s always been a feeling of hope in his music, at least until now. Bruce has forever been the eternal optimist, from his early outings where he and the band were running wild down the backstreets, there has always been an essence of time standing still, with the horizon being a line of demarcation, which once crossed, opens the whole world to anyone who's had a vision, and set out to make it real. But here on Wrecking Ball, for the most part, Bruce has entirely lost me.

Instead of standing tall with the stars at his back, Bruce hunkers down with a series of endless ballads that go on much too long. Perhaps I’ve heard too many of his ballads over the generations, perhaps he’s got nothing new to say, perhaps he’s lost his way ... regardless, “We Take Care Of Our Own,” “Easy Money,” “Shackled & Drawn,” “Wrecking Ball,” and “You’ve Got It,” are the only songs that inspire gutsy strength and stamina, with the rest of the numbers [all eight of them] sounding like the soundtrack to a grainy black and white movie about an aspiring down an out boxer who’s lover dies of cancer in the hospital at the same moment he was knocked to the mat, and then out.

Granted, discounting the nature of America these days, this is the first album without the genius of both Clemons and Weinberg, nor do any other long-riding of the E. Street Band make an appearance either ... suggesting that Bruce, and rightly so, may be feeling truly venerable for the first time in his life. Regardless, this is not the Bruce Springsteen we need right now. We need the masked marvel in his tattered jeans, blistered guitar, powerful driving rhythms, musical visions of justice, kicked in the teeth and smiling, man of hope and splendor.

I for one will be flashing the E Light off the low hanging clouds tonight, hoping to spark back to life the sleeping musical giant to fill my lungs so that I can shout down the insanity of the right-winged walls one more time.

Review by Jenell Kesler