The new Springsteen record is out, and it’s underwhelming. While I wonder sometimes what’s wrong with me–a lot of my Bullz-Eye colleagues love this record–it sounds as if The Boss is more like The Middle Manager: 30 years ago, in songs like “Rosalita” and “Born To Run,” Springsteen and the band would gather steam like a double-tractor-trailer huffing through the Berkshires on I-90 up the mountain, cresting at the top with a cathartic pause, and just over the top, Rosie, the record company just gave me a big adva-a-a-ance! Ooooaahhhh! The highway’s jammed with broken heroes on a last-chance power drive!
Those songs rushed downhill after their orgasmic middles, barely holding the road banging through joyous, precarious musical curves at unsafe speeds. But Bruce and Clarence always got us home safely.
Nowadays, Springsteen’s music sounds nice, the chords are pleasant, the sax still wails, but he hasn’t slammed it into overdrive for a couple decades.
His new songs contain stories, still, but mundane as your next door neighbor couple’s arguments (“Think about the future, baby, none of this has happened yet”) and not life-altering, on the edge stuff like leaving your wife and kids in Baltimore, jack, or “Mister State Trooper,” that was intense.
Don’t get me wrong, this aging “Springsteen 2.0” is still better than anything John Cafferty, Bonnie Jovie, Southside Johnny or the Brooklyn-born Eddie Money ever put out, even in their heyday. He knows songcraft. And he knows his limitations and works within them to create good tuneage.
Maybe I’m just an old fart who’s living back in 1984, looking for an adrenaline shot that doesn’t exist. At any rate, it sent me on a MySpace Music hunt for a younger Jersey throwback, one that might be picking up the torch for us Springsteen fans who want a little more of the rough-and-tumble back.
It’s still elusive.
In the meanwhile, however, the search did turn up a freaking great band to check out called Wiser Time (pictured below).
These Black Crowes clones (they’re named after a Crowes song) pack some serious electric-slide punch into their original songs, and in the typical New Jersey rock style, do not aspire to bookish heights of rock intelligence. Amen, brother, we could all use a little less heavy thinking and a little more git-ar distortion. With a side order of slide.
