Simultaneous with the release of Tracks, Bruce Springsteen's new four-disk compilation of previously unreleased masters, stores across the country began to sell Songs, a 306-page book anthologizing every lyric Springsteen ever penned. These expensive, lavishly-produced new releases--together, the photo-heavy book and the beautifully packaged compilation will cost the die-hard fan $100--coincided exactly with Springsteen's nomination for the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, and roughly with the release of multi-disk compilations by Springsteen's fellow Hall of Famers Bob Dylan and (posthumously) John Lennon.
Critics always seem to give Springsteen the benefit of the doubt: He seems so sincere, sings so softly about issues of social inequality, that few have seriously suggested that Springsteen is now in the business of making money and generating publicity rather than music. (Few have noted, for instance, that it is now almost impossible to watch an awards show or benefit performance without running into the ubiquitous Boss.) And so the positive spin on Tracks is that now, when the giants of rock music are weighing in, Springsteen, too, is asking to be re-valued and re-evaluated.
Since 1992, Springsteen has released only one album of new music, the fairly boring and indifferently-received The Ghost of Tom Joad (1995), which told long stories with underlying messges of social protest to the accompanying of a softlystrummed guitar, and which sold only 585,000 copies: small change for a giant like Springsteen, whose 1984 release Born in the U.S.A. was one of the best-selling albums of all time. But in the year Joad was released, Springsteen issued his first Greatest Hits compilation, which sold a healthy 2.2 million copies, followed last year by a live album, In Concert: Plugged. And now Tracks, 66 remastered demos, outtakes, cast-aways and lost classics, 56 of which have never before been released in any form.
In both iconography and content, the new compilation admits what anyone might have realized: for years, Springsteen has been more retrospective than productive. Each of Tracks' four disks spans a period in Springsteen's recording life: but while the first three albums cover the years 1973-1987, the final 11 years of Springsteen's recording history are condensed onto a single album--mostly containing songs recorded in or before 1992--which is encased in a jacket whose cover shows, in blue-tint monochrome, a rearview mirror and the roadside behind.
The quality of the songs on Tracks varies widely from the terrific to the utterly assinine: most songs sound unremarkable but familiar. The first disk, however--covering the years 1972-77, but focusing heavily on 1972 and 1973, the years of Springsteen's major-label break-through--is almost uniformly very good, by far the best disk of this compilation; this is owed, in large part, to the remastered demos which Springsteen recorded solo for Columbia Records, with which the album opens. These songs will be familiar to fans of Springsteen's older work: they were released, played by the full band, on Springsteen's first Columbia album, Greetings from Asbury Park. They are fabulous, and nothing on the rest of the compilation approaches the intense, nervous energy in the 22-year-old Springsteen's performance. The lyrics are plastic, tumbling together and riding easily along the riffs from Springsteen's busy guitar. Coherence is valued: not the coherence of sensible language and conventional plotlines, but the coherence between rhythm of language and rhythm of music.
This is Springsteen at his flawed best, reminding us of our youthful affection: adorable Bruce in his white undershirt, half-shaven. But in the middle of the catchiest tune on the album, "Seaside Bar Song," which shares with the '60s-infused swinger "So Young and In Love" and the second disk's "Where the Bands Are" the same attitude of giggly boardwalk fun that made the early albums special, Springsteen reminds us where he is going: out of the organs and saxophone comes the ancestor of The Ghost of Tom Joad's most recognizeable whispered refrain, "The highway is alive tonight." And on soulful ballads like "Iceman," there is a hint of the late '90s, sober Springsteen: but "Iceman" is shapeless, hardly the equal of the following track--and the disk's best song--the high-adrenaline "Bring on the Night."
In presenting this archive of unused material, Springsteen begs the listener to question the choices made in assembling previous albums. It is difficult to say why "A Good Man is Hard to Find," the second disk's meditative song about the Vietnam War dead, did not make the cut for Nebraska, which included not only several forgettable songs--"Highway Patrolman," "Used Cars"--but also some of Springsteen's most idiotic whooping ("State Trooper"). In general, though, it seems that Springsteen's editorial taste has been very good: the songs on the second disk (1980-83) often feel as if they might have been perfect for 1984's Born in the U.S.A., but there is almost always something missing, a glaring or a tiny imperfection. Songs like "Roulette" and "Dollhouse" ring with energy, but are not thick enough to conceal infantile lyrics ("Roulette, that's the name/Roulette, that's the game now"); "I Want to Be with You" hooks the listener on the chorus, but repeats itself endlessly. As on the first disk, Springsteen teaches the listener something by revealing his musical influences more clearly than ever before. But while on disk one's "Santa Ana" Springsteen did a passable Dylan impersonation, here the listener is confronted with the ugly truth about the Springsteen of the early '80s: the strained, country-infused rocker "Take 'Em as They Come" sounds like the misbegotten lovechild of Journey and the Eagles, and would have been better unrescued from Columbia's archives. Fortunately, Springsteen makes up for his mistakes with "Johnny Bye-Bye," a tiny gem of a song co-written with Chuck Berry and reminiscent of the smooth, clean hooks of "Darlington Country" and "Working on the Highway."
The song that will attract the most attention in the compilation is the acoustic version of "Born in the U.S.A.," recorded originally for Nebraska, but not included on the final tracklist for that album. Perhaps Springsteen means through its inclusion to indicate that he has always been writing Joad-like protest music, even in composing his most famous arena rocker: but the acoustic version of "Born in the U.S.A." is fierce, bitter and passionate: There is anger in Springsteen's voice and in his inflections anger absent from Joad, where is it replaced by a still, quiet sadness.
With the third album, Tracks takes a downward turn. "This Hard Land" is bright and memorable: It is especially easy to remember since Springsteen also included it--for reasons known only to Springsteen--on his Greatest Hits album. Several songs--such as "TV Movie" and "Part Man, Part Monkey"--are intended to be humorous and satirical, but Sprinsteen has always done best when conveying gentle humor and playfulness not through clever lyrics but through whimsical music, as in Born in the U.S.A.'s "Glory Days." Those who appreciate the hardscrabble optimist Springsteen of Joad will love "The Wish" and "The Honeymooners," but some will perhaps not in the plainly autobiographical lyrics of "The Wish" Springsteen's desire to ingratiate himself through bare confessional.
And "The Wish" is indicative of the more troubling of the new trends in Springsteen's music. Certainly, he has moved away from musicality and towards narrative, but it seems that--in certain instances, most notably his "Secret Garden" hit from the Jerry Maguire soundtrack--Springsteen has also made moves in the opposite direction, towards slickly produced, saccharine songs with depressingly banal messages.
Throughout most of the fourth disk, synthesizers play floating minor chords over mechanized drumbeats. In the mystifyingly moronic "Trouble in Paradise," the same Springsteen who professes to value lyrics actually writes "You do the drying, I'll do the dishes/Who'll do the crying when all the wishes don't come true?" Springsteen must have intended for the listener to sense a deep, realistic optimism at the core of Springsteen's famous hard-luck pessimism: instead, he sounds like a musical Danielle Steele, chronicling the middle-age discovery of true joy in a tainted world: "Happy/With you in my arms/Happy/With you in my heart." It is not that contemporary music requires intelligent lyrics to be successful, but if the lyrics go unaccompanied by powerful music, they might at least avoid offending the listener.
Even those who bemoan Springsteen's turntowards socially-conscious narrative music, then,will be happy with the end of the album:conceivably, Springsteen intended the embarrassingsoft-rock barrage that burdens much of disk fourto warn the fan that there are worse things thanprotest music. On "Goin' Cali," Springsteen showsthat even at his most tuneless, his leastpropulsive, his voice conveys remarkablycompelling, barely restrained emotion. And"Brothers under the Bridge," hearkening back tothe similar but incomparably awful 1983 tune ofthe same name, does demonstrate a certain amountof maturation: It is as powerful as "Youngstown,"Joad's cornerstone and Springsteen's bestnew song of the past decade. Even here, though, itfeels as if Springsteen has lead the listener to afalse conclusion: that the 1995 version of"Brothers" is a better song than the similar 1983version indicates only how bad this particular1983 outtake was. It does not demonstrateSpringsteen's continued viability as a creativeforce.
It is telling that the book intended toaccompany Tracks is titled Songs,which of course is complete nonsense: whatSongs contains are lyrics, while actualsongs have music. Springsteen, in the course ofhis evolution, has arrived--regrettably, ifJoad is any evidence--at a point where hebelieves the messages in songs need not beconveyed through music. And so the intermixing ofother forms of media--since the late '70s,Springsteen says, his inspiration has come notfrom music but from "films, novels andbook"--necessary in the absence of compellingmusic, a cross-polination which often reaches thepoint of extreme pretentiousness or even ofridiculousness: The Ghost of Tom Joad is analbum with source credits that include scholarshipon migrant workers, Steinbeck's Grapes ofWrath and John Ford's Grapes movie.Springsteen has arrived at some type of mediaalchemy, his songs associated with movies--all ofhis recent hits, "Philadelphia," "Dead ManWalking" and "Secret Garden," have come offsoundtracks--and even, on the fourth disk ofTracks, quoting directly from Pete Dexter'sscreen-adapted novel Paris Trout and fromfilm critic Pauline Kael.
Now, with Tracks and Songs,Springsteen has composed a sort of documentary tohis own musical career, attempted to focus andshape our understanding of his musical evolution.Springsteen does not have overly ambitious hopesfor the compilation's reception: Tracksseems intended as a message to those who arealready familiar with Springsteen. This is as itshould be: those who are not ardent fans will beless than enthusiastic about paying $50 for acollection of songs which, on the whole, weresimply not good enough to be included on earlierrecords. Tracks is an attempt to remindfans of the energy of Springsteen's youth, and toconvince them of the profundity of his olderyears. It attempts to convince the listener thatthere are definite connections between his personaat opposite ends of a quarter-century recordingcareer. Tracks argues that fans of theyoung Springsteen, screaming through a wall ofsound, are indeed also fans of the olderSpringsteen, alone with his acoustic guitar. Butwhile continuities are evident on Tracks,far more present is the sense that Springsteen haslost the connection between music and lyric, thedriving and unavoidable force of his vocal linesas they were propelled by the slap-happyenthusiasm of the E-Street Band. This is arevelatory compilation: not a compilation ofextraordinary songs, but a compilation importantfor the way that the interaction and arrangementof songs show how impoverished his songs havebecome, now that lyrics have been dissociated frommusic
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