Music : Nebraska

Rating: - Not for Everyone
"You wanna know why I did what I did; well, sir, I guess there's just a meanness in this world." So ends the first and title track of this album. The song 'Nebraska' is based, like Terrence Malick's 1973 movie 'Badlands', on the story of the 1950's killer, Charles Starkweather. As with all the songs here, Springsteen sings in the first person, becoming the characters he breathes to life. The first song, chilling and nihilistic, sets the tone for the rest of the album, which portrays the stark working class existance of small town life.

Here we meet people living on the edge. People with a thin sense of hope running on empty. Yet out of the initial depression and bleakness of his landscape, Springsteen can find a humanity in many of his people, still shining just beneath the surface.

This is not an album for everyone. Certainly, it is different from most of Bruce Springsteen's music, perhaps finding it's closest echo in 'The River'. The sound is raw, apparently recorded in Springsteen's own basement, and features a solo performance with only guitar and harmonica. It's tone and sometimes despair recalls the desperation of the dust bowl blues; the lyrics resonate like Raymond Carver stories put to music. Never before or since has Springsteen created such evocative slices of life with such an economy of words.

All in all, an extraordinary album. Unique, wild, raw, and beautiful. Deceptive in its simplicity, and disturbing too. A great album.

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Rating: - Not For Newcomers
This is an excellent piece of music--please don't get me wrong. I will be sure to sing its praises insofar as I am able. First off, though, I must preface this review with a warning. If you are new to Bruce Springsteen and you think you like his music, you need to stick with the more mainstream material for a while. You're not going to warm up to this one quickly. You may not ever make it.

The reason why you're going to have that difficulty is because there is nothing in this album that relates at all to what makes other music from Bruce Springsteen good. The E Street Band was excused, so that means no saxophone, no piano, and no gargantuan wall of sound. Indeed--I think you'll find that you can't even listen to this CD in your car because it occasionally fades so low as to be overwhelmed by the sounds of traffic. There is no way to even distinguish this as a Springsteen album, were it not for his grating, raspy, loveably awful voice on the tracks.

Honestly, it's hard to say what makes this album good. I've always considered people who believe that any piece of music which sounds like an old drunk playing a kazoo into a tin can were stupid. I still do. You should not come to this show for its production values, because it sounds like something your neighbor would record in his garage. Fortunately, that works here, since Springsteen is the only performer and the sound itself is a lot more akin to that you would expect from a performance by a single person.

I will confess that I hated this CD the first two times I played it. It moves slowly, there's little in the way of catchy tunes, and it's so quiet that you really can't do anything other than sit like a lump and listen to it. Over time, however, it has grown on me, mostly because of the brilliant execution of theme (harder to define in this one than his previous albums, but justice and the law play big roles) and the relatively uncluttered nature of the album. This is essentially what you get when you put Bruce Springsteen into a pressure cooker and sweat him down to a guitar and a harmonica, and there's a lot to like there (unlike Tom Joad, which pales in comparison to this effort). While I do think the disc gets slow at points, I still can't think of any fundamental flaw with it, and so it gets my somewhat unconditional recommendation. Just don't expect it to sound like Born in the U.S.A.

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Rating: - The Odd One Out
Now this may come as a shock to some of you, but I by and large detest the music of Bruce Springsteen. I had the impression people fought wars to get rid of his dreadful bombast,his overwrought lyrics, and his overbaked tunes. For Pete's sake Born in the U.S.A is a crime!

But here's the rub. This album is a complete exception. It may be the first lo-fi album by a major artist, after all new equipment had to be built in order to master the album.

Why is it so good? Why do I like this when I find almost everything else he did abhorrent?

Because it's stark, it's simple, it is by far and away his best set of lyrics, and in its own little way it's got the punk spirit all over it, a gesture of defiance and solidarity with the working man against the forces of Reagan and co. It matters because it captures the period so very well, almost all you need to know about the effect of Reagan's policies on blue collar America you can learn from this. This is an album seemingly dedicated to the people who didn't survive.

If only he'd make another like this.

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Rating: - The bleakest album I own
Effectively demos for a recording session that ended up released because Bruce didn't like the way the band did it! And that straight after The River.

This album is about as low key as any artist has a right to go and from its folky Nebraska beginning, through its asleep at the wheel State Trooper to insomniac chugs like Johnny 99 and Reason To Believe, this album creeps in from the Mid West unwelcome.

While the nearest thing to a hit on the album is the roaring Atlantic City it is in the claustraphobia of User Cars and the melancholy of Highway Patrolman that Springsteen shows us something that has been coming upon us a long time and is still coming.

Yet, perversely, the madcap Open All Night somehow always drags me back. Almost gives you a reason to believe.

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Rating: - Great American Classic
Bruce has been singing, songwriting and producing music w/ the E street band. He takes a colder, acoustic sense of reality using contrast and sadness. A great travel cd, excellent lyrics!