"Bruce Springsteen - Devils + Dust"

Bruce Springsteen has always written songs that feel epic and bombastic. Everything is important, everything is a matter of life and death in a Bruce Springsteen tune--whether it's cruising Main Street, escaping one's hometown, escaping poverty or the law, or whatever--Bruce's songs have a cinematic, melodramatic feel to them. And it works. With some artists, this sort of approach would seem artificial and fake, but the Boss makes it seem natural and real and human...just epic. Blown up and magnified for the big screen.

Devils + Dust has that cinematic feel to it. It's a fairly low-key album for the Boss, but it still feels like he's trying to tell the story of everyone in the midwest and the south. The music seems to reflect this effort--there are slide guitars, harmonicas, doboros, acoustics gallore, and the occasional fiddle. Springsteen also tries on numerous styles, including country, country blues, and acoustic blues. Musically, this album recalls the Great Plains and the American West. There are several straight-ahead rockers on here, too. The title track, which opens the album, is a slow-building, driving anthem that rises to a cresendo and leads into the second track, "All the Way Home," perfectly. "Reno" is a slow, meloncholy tune about a man's encounter with a prostitute. It's also about the saddest song I've ever heard. The final lines, "It wasn't the best I'd ever had,/Not even close," are filled with such saddness and despair that it almost brings you to tears. They're the words of a man who regretted his actions with every fiber of his being, and knows that it wasn't even near worth it. "Black Cowboys" is about a youth who reads about the Seminole Negroes of the post-Civil War Oklahoma Territory.

Springsteen tries a variety of vocal affectations on this record, some working better than others. The world-weary, raspy voice of the narrator in "Reno" is very affecting, while the quavering falsetto in "Maria's Bed" only works part of the time (while musically it's a raucous, entertaining song. It's actually my favorite song even in spite of the vocals, which speaks highly of the song as a whole). But most of the time, Springsteen relies on a deep, world-weary tone that conveys emotion and feeling exceptionally well.

Devils + Dust is a solid, well-made album. It rocks, it shuffles, it ebbs and flows the way a classic album ought to. It's concerned with salvation on a personal level, where The Rising was concerned with the salvation of the entire human race, achieved through personal stories. Here, the personal stories are about efforts for salvation, the failure for personal salvation, or the search for redemption in the face of adversities personal and universal. Devils + Dust showcases a talent that has only gotten better with age, a man who has aged gracefully but never given up his fights. It's a truly great record, and well-worth purchasing.

~chuck

Song of the Moment: Bruce Springsteen, "Maria's Bed"