How can a white, salt-of-the-earth rock musician from New Jersey, obsessed with the metaphoric potential of car brands, his father’s working class heritage and the ideal of rock music as a proletariat/political genre not only have a career spanning 20 albums, but make music that still sounds good to a 20-something arts student living in the 21st century?
Bruce Springsteen is an interesting musician. To be honest, I was quite surprised to find one of his records in my parents music collection since to me it feels like he was, is and always will be in his late 40s. He feels too straightforward, too single-genred to be musically interesting: his voice strained by the struggles of a workman’s life and his guitar battered by the struggle to keep true rock alive. His lyrics are a strange mix of political rallying, homeland/heartland conservatism and an almost comical fascination with cars. On the occasion that he alludes to a romantic interest, it is usually in the context of life’s struggles or family issues and always with the goal to ‘make her mine’. All of these characteristic should be off-putting to someone born at the end of the 1990s, too far removed from my life experience by more than only time and geographical distance. However, Darkness on the Edge of Town, regardless of its talk about Cadillacs and Chevys, dads working in the mine and the broken dreams of the working class, is actually a really good album.
I prepared myself for something to endure. A roughly 45 minute long staring match of the same four chords being repeated over and over again. Slight variations on the same guitar solo followed by a lot of talk about the good ol’ days and the best way to fix your sweetheart’s Shelby Cobra (I had to google that). However, I was proven wrong by the first drum fill that introduces Badlands, the record’s opening track. To be frank, Springsteen did not disappoint any of my expectations: he does sing about the beaten, the broken, the cast-asides, but he does so with some spice, a dazzling piano line and a sprinkle of urgency. His first guitar solo is short and fun and its combination with a saxophone (not something I expected on the first track of a classic rock musician) shows a keen eye to structuring, dynamics and texture. Badlands opens up an intensity and richness I did not expect to find intriguing. It is clear that Springsteen’s music is grounded in a specific time and there is no producer in the world that could turn this record into a contemporary release. But this does not make the Boss’s 1978 sound seem dated – it makes for quite an exciting deep dive into 70s rock.
Exciting to see the variety not only in Springsteen’s writing (he can churn out a smash hit as much as a tender ballad), but in his voice and timbre as well. One of the most striking songs on a record that never strays from its firm true rock centre is Adam raised a Cain. Not that this track is anything but hard rock – Springsteen allegedly compared this tracks to a sudden cut to a corpse interrupting a romantic comedy – but it is so immediately and distinctly different from the excitement and brightness of the previous track that there is no denying Springsteen’s song writing talent. His howling towards the verses, the jittering guitar solo that drags out the notes, carving into the flesh of the harmony until it is able to break free into a melodic line. It’s a dry anger swelling underneath the straightforward rhythm, almost pleasured by the morbid acceptance of pain and hurt. A father-son-relationship that is equally built on love and disdain: In the Bible brother Cain slew Abel / and East of Eden mama he was cast / You’re born into this life paying / for the sins of somebody else’s past.
Springsteen has found his voice with this album: the scenes he paints of working class people seem to actively fight the heroism of the workingman in American capitalism. Instead of glorifying their struggles before a fresco titled ‘The American Dream’, his protagonists are surviving not living, as they grasp for air. They are emotionally and financially broken. They struggle to hold on and at the same time want nothing more. But now there’s wrinkles around my baby’s eyes / and she cries herself to sleep at night / When I come home the house is dark / she sighs ‘Baby did you make it alright’. Musically, Racing in the Street is a beautifully tender and clean piano ballad. But lyrically it is an examination of how many blows a simple life can take before one longs for driving away towards the highway of escapism. Even though I am getting tired of the excessive use of car images in Springsteen’s music, the image of driving through the streets towards the horizon makes sense for his song. The only tragedy is that the highway exit never comes and that Springsteen’s driver keeps running circles around the block of his beaten down two-story house – for him to return to a lover with the eyes of one who hates for just being born.
Considering the album’s title it seems fitting that there is a darkness hiding in all of the tracks. Even the ones that appear to be celebratory and flirtatious have something staining their carefree and frivolous demeanour. Candy’s Room is the perfect example: built around a snare beat that almost makes your heart explode in romantic excitement, the darkness surrounding this confession of love does not only exist in Springsteen’s lyrics. It cracks open the chorus, infesting Springsteen’s voice with a sudden rush of desperation and pleading. His guitar is sharp, crisp, punching through the haziness of this haunted relationship – a last musical attempt to clear Candy’s Room of the smoke of past relationships and the burdens that come with them.
Even though no song on the record comes as a surprise – they are all solid variations of rock music, some more hard hitting and some more ballady – Darkness on the Edge of Town is incredibly versatile and nuanced. Every guitar solo is a thrilling novelty, especially in the instances when it is paired with a saxophone (and later a harmonica) and Springsteen certainly knows how to keep the energy afloat throughout his record. The production is bright and exciting, a brilliant contradiction to the loom and gloom of the landscapes sketched within the songs, and proof that Springsteen’s rock, however classic, is still concerned with variety and, ultimately, empathy. And most importantly, it is a testament to the Boss’s song writing talent that he keeps me interested for almost 45 minutes despite mentioning more than three car models by name.
The Dad Anthology 