CD Odyssey Disc 948: Bruce Springsteen

For the second straight review the CD Odyssey delivers a 5 star album. Last time it was a bright and shiny newcomer. This time, it is a music veteran.

Disc 948 is….Nebraska

Artist: Bruce Springsteen

Year of Release: 1982

What’s up with the Cover? A lonely stretch of back road. I’m going to go out on a limb and say it is somewhere in Nebraska, but as a west coast guy all that flatland pretty much looks the same to me. I’d rather have oceans and mountains but since this record isn’t about getting what you want, the cover is appropriate.

How I Came To Know It: Once I was hooked on Springsteen, I began drilling through his collection, starting in the period I liked his sound the most. Coming out in 1982, “Nebraska” fell right into that sweet spot, and didn’t disappoint.

How It Stacks Up:  I have ten Bruce Springsteen albums. This one is my second favourite. It is also the last of his records left for me to review, so let’s recap:

1. Darkness at the Edge of Town: 5 stars (reviewed at Disc 612)
2. Nebraska: 5 stars (reviewed right here)
3. Born in the U.S.A.: 4 stars (reviewed at Disc 769)
4. Tunnel of Love: 4 stars (reviewed at Disc 761)
5. The Promise: 4 stars (reviewed at Disc 305)
6. The Rising: 4 stars (reviewed at Disc 741)
7. The River: 4 stars (reviewed at Disc 654)
8. Born to Run: 4 stars (reviewed at Disc 574)
9. Greetings from Asbury Park, N.J.: 3 stars (reviewed at Disc 506)
10. Devils & Dust: 3 stars (reviewed at Disc 695)

Ratings: 5 stars

When an album entirely composed of remakes of songs from “Nebraska” can score four stars on the CD Odyssey, it is a pretty good bet I liked the original.

This album s a masterpiece, as stark and bleak as the album cover would suggest. Characters struggle to get by, sometimes making good choices, sometimes not.

Falling between hit machines “The River” (1980) and “Born in the U.S.A.” (1984) this record is sometimes overlooked by radio-friendly North America, but that would be a mistake.

“Nebraska” is a quiet record, with light lo-fi production, and a heavy focus on lyrics and sparse instrumentation. If you’re looking for Clarence Clemons to blast a saxophone lick, you’re going to be disappointed. In fact, I found sections of the record to be a bit too lo-fi. The whole record was essentially recorded as a demo tape, and some of those imperfections (changes in volume, Springsteen mumbling a word here and there) pull you out of the experience.

And that quibble is the only one you’re going to hear from me about “Nebraska”. This is a great record, filled with some of the best songwriting Springsteen has ever delivered.

The opening (and title) track is a master class in storytelling. A low and mournful harmonica starts you out on the cold plains of Nebraska, and the colder streets of Lincoln. From there, a broken and damaged man and a young girl tear through Wyoming, murdering ten people before meeting their end in the electric chair. Well, he ends up in the chair. He requests she sit on his lap when they pull the switch, but I don’t think they allow that kind of thing.

Springsteen’s ability to capture the numb disconnect of the narrator is captured at the song’s conclusion:

“They declared me unfit to live

said into that great void my soul’d be hurled.

They wanted to know why I did what I did

Sir, I guess there’s just a meanness in this world.”

Yikes.

Later on the record, a guy down on luck takes his fading love to “Atlantic City” to make a little extra money doing something shady, another man contemplates the local prison on the hill. On “State Trooper” people pray that they don’t get pulled over by the cops, on “Used Cars” kids scowl and lose their innocence watching their parents get chiseled by used car salesmen. On “My Father’s House” the character arrives too late to reconcile with his father, who has died or moved out but either way, is gone.

That stark production I complained about earlier fits these desperate stories like a fingerless glove held over a burning barrel on a winter night; stained and frayed but serviceable with a sense that it ‘belongs’.

The record’s best song is “Highway Patrolman.” It is about two brothers: one a highway patrolman, and the other a ne’er-do-well. Again, Springsteen tells a tale of honour and sacrifice through the prism of one man’s moral dilemma, letting the specifics of that story represent those bigger concepts. The song begins:

“My name is Joe Roberts, I work for the state.

I’m a sergeant out of Perrinville, barracks number eight

I always done an honest job, as honest as I could

I got a brother named Frankie, and Frankie ain’t no good.”

Watching Joe Roberts try to reconcile his commitment to justice and his inability to get his brother to walk the straight and narrow is both heart-rending and emotionally complicated. That complicated feeling persists until the song’s end, when (spoiler alert) Joe lets Frankie escape to Canada.

For all the bleakness, however, Springsteen’s core of optimism remains, even if it is shining through in distorted ways. Joe Roberts holds onto his humanity even though he has to violate his sworn oath to the state to do so.

The record ends with “Reason to Believe” which on a record as stark as “Nebraska” is the perfect tonic for the troubled mind. “Reason to Believe” doesn’t offer up any easy solutions either. A man runs over a dog, a woman is left by her man. A boy grows up and lives his whole life in poverty, and a man gets left at the altar. Yet the musical backdrop to all this misery is an up-tempo almost hopeful tune. As Springsteen triumphantly sings in the chorus “At the end of every hard-earned day, people find some reason to believe.”

It isn’t much of a victory, to be sure. It should ring hollow given all the human misery we’ve heard on the record, but somehow it makes us feel a little better – that somehow enduring through tough times is its own reward.

The real reward here is the masterpiece of mood and music that is “Nebraska”. Beautiful to listen to and as affecting and though-provoking on the tenth listen as the first time you hear it.

Best tracks: all tracks