Bruce Springsteen - Nebraska
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Free Music Notes for Nebraska
Free Music Review: Tales of cops and robbers
Hit: 5 Stars
If you painted pictures from these songs, they'd be in starkest black and white with splashes of red. The music itself is stark--just Bruce singing with his guitar and a harmonica howling sharp.
The title track is probably one of the scariest songs I have ever heard. The opening lyrics will make your hair stand up on end:
"I saw her standin' on her front lawn just twirlin' her baton
Me and her went for a ride sir and ten innocent people died"
If Bruce isn't talking killers, he's talking cops. In "Highway Patrolman", Sgt Joe Roberts has got to put up with family trouble:
"Now ever since we was young kids it's been the same come down
I get a call over the radio Franky's in trouble downtown
Well if it was any other man, I'd put him straight away
But when it's your brother sometimes you look the other way..."
There's poor kids watching how the rich live in "Mansion on the Hill," driving in the dark in "Open all Night," and a whole lot more. It's harsh, but in some cases hopeful. This is definitely not a party album or one you would listen to if you were needing to be cheered up, but the storytelling's some of the most solid around.
Rebecca Kyle, June 2008
Free Music Review: Rusty metal
Hit: 5 Stars
Take your car on a late afternoon and drive to a wide open place far from the city, with short wild vegetation and rocky mountains in the background. Find a spot beside the road where to park your car, get off and walk to some old abandoned rusty car frame.
Sit down, while the sun is setting and the soft wind is clanging against and through the metal.
Listen. This is Nebraska.
Free Music Review: Through to the badlands of Wyoming ...
Hit: 5 Stars
The atmospheric sound of this classic album is made up of only voice, guitar and harmonica. The stories are told in compelling imagery over stately melodies. Although the sentiment is deeply melancholic, the promise of redemption is never entirely absent. Places like Lincoln, Atlantic City, Ohio, Michigan, New Jersey, Johnstown, Wyoming and Linden Town provide the setting for these tales of nostalgia, trouble and heartbreak.
If you've seen the 1973 movie Badlands (Sissy Spacek and Martin Sheen) you'll have a more profound understanding of the title track. Both it and Mansion on the Hill are slow and mournful whilst Atlantic City has a lilting beat and Johnny 99 is edgy with its nervous guitar riffs that also infuse State Trooper, a song that thematically relates to Highway Patrolman.
Springsteen's characteristic car and road imagery surfaces in Used Cars with its poignant childhood recollections as well as in Open All Night, an uptempo rock song, the only one on the album. The line "radios jammed up with gospel stations, lost souls callin' lost distance salvation" reminds me of Far Away Eyes by the Stones, a tongue-in-cheek country song on Some Girls. For some reason, it also makes me think of Hank Williams.
Guilt, remorse and the yearning for redemption are expressed in vivid oneiric imagery on the haunting track My Father's House. Reason to Believe concludes this outstanding album on an uplifting note with the observation that people ultimately do find meaning. It echoes a similar hope earlier expressed in Atlantic City, the notion that perhaps everything that dies someday comes back. Its simplicity, profundity and power make Nebraska a masterpiece and a highly influential work.
Free Music Review: I love this one...
Hit: 5 Stars
Sparse, stark and brilliant--Springsteen at his best--all alone with just an acoustic guitar and a harmonica. When I first heard this one(many years ago) I wasn't quite sure what to make of it, but after a couple more listens it grew on me more and more until it really became one of my favorite Springsteen albums. I love his stuff with the E St. Band, but this is a nice change of pace--The Boss at his basic best.Give this one a couple of serious listens and I bet you'll come away feeling the same.Free Music Review: Dark, haunting, and utterly brilliant. One of Bruce's best.
Hit: 5 Stars
I'll be completely honest. "Nebraska" didn't do it for me the first time I listened to it. You see, it was playing while I was occupied, which is NOT the way to listen to this album (or any Springsteen album, for that matter). The second run-through garnered a much more positive view. However, it wasn't until I listened to "Badlands: A Tribute to Bruce Springsteen's 'Nebraska'" (which I bought pretty much just for Johnny Cash's version of "I'm on Fire") that I realized just how brilliant this album really is. I just wish it wouldn't have taken so long or for it to be under those circumstances. For someone who loves dark introspective albums, this is right up my alley, but the stark solo acoustic arrangements just didn't hit home right away. Better late than never, huh?
There are no bad tracks. There is no less than superb track. Each song (told from the first person) is a haunting tale of people beat down by life, people that have messed up big time in life, people that need something more in life. There's not much hope for a better life here, not like Bruce's previous albums. This is a dark, cynical ride. I mean, the title track is about a real-life serial killer! Does it get an darker than that?!
Everyone's heard "Atlantic City", it's this record's most well-known song, and as good as it is (and it's really, really good), it's not even the best song here. "Johnny 99", about a man sentenced to 99 years in prison, "Highway Patrolman", "State Trooper" (which succeeds in being genuinely scary), "Open All Night" (which is this album's most upbeat track, and that's not saying much), man, I could listen to them over and over.
It may take a little time to grow on you, but there is no question that this is a masterpiece of an album. Easily one of Springsteen's best (I'd place "Born to Run" and "Darkness on the Edge of Town" above it, but that's just me). Bruce's other two mostly solo & acoustic albums ("The Ghost of Tom Joad", "Devils and Dust"), while good, can't even compare to this. Highly, highly recommended. The fact that Springsteen could release an album like this that flies in the face of pretty much every other record in 1982 is just further proof of why he's "The Boss".