RECENT WEEKS have seen two major events eagerly awaited by millions since 1987 - the general election and new recordings from Bruce Springsteen. Both inevitably promised more than they could possibly deliver.
As a musician and vocalist Springsteen is a limited talent. As a songwriter, the sustained brilliance of "The River and Nebraska' is more than offset by multiple mundane reworkings of 1960s R&B standards, But politically, it's fascinating to see an artist who con sciously bases his work on the concerns of rust belt America's male blue collar proletariat become universally popular. While it's rare for nocialists to have a good word The Boss, it's a different matThe Springsteen songbook s casually littered with poig nant first person tales of job workin ; construction, 1 work five days a week highway laying down the blacktop'.
The immortal couplet 'now I swing a sledgehammer on a railroad gang knocking down them cross ties/ working in the rain' both scans dreadfully and descends into self-parody.
Springsteen's working class alter-egos have invariably 'got a union connection with an uncle of Wayne's' and even met their latest girlfriend 'at a dance down the union hall'".
Unfortunately, when the US economy dips and double dips, the 'connections' prove worthless: Lately there ain't been much work/on account of the economy. they closed down the auto plant, 1 got laid off at the lumber yard'.
Not one Springsteen song celebrates organised workers fighting back. Instead, we get individual acts of desperation from passive victims of capitalism.
A typical example is Johnny 99 from Nebraska', where a laid-off car worker in nortgage arrears gets blind night watchman while trying sure the system stinks bud but there ain't much like an can de about people now Bruce is a happily-married daddy living i nia lifestyle, even this level of understanding seems to have On Human Touch'- the more rock-orientated of the two new releases - he laments 1 bought a bourgeois house in the Hollywood hills/with a trunkload of hundred The Boss: scans dreadfully and descends into seif parody thousand dollar bills'. Fine -just don't expect too much empathy from the protes.
Overall, 'Human Touch' is well crafted, with up to half the tracks catchy enough to stick in your head after a fow plays. But given the five year nterval, that's hardly good enough.
The better of the two new albums, the autobiographical 'Lucky Town, parison with Dylan's recent Leap of Faith employs strong religious and sexual imagery, while 'Souls of the Departed' movingly hits out at the Basra massacre from the Viewpoint of a new father angry over the murder of Other men's sons • A QUICK plug for the new Gary Moore album 'After Hours'.
Air guitar stuff for sure, but air guitar of the highest order. Blistering heavy blues at its most pleasurable best, with clever injections from brass and string sections and guest appearances from blues veterans BB King and Albert Collins lifting the material well above the cliches inherent in the genre.
The songwriting reveals the former Skid Row and Thin Lizzy guitarist is not what call a new man. but hat's true of the entire blues idiom from Blind Lemon Jeffer. son to the present day.
Musically, 'After Hours" is even better than Moore's 1990 classic, 'Still Got the Blues'. If there's anything of the closet headbanger in you at all, you won't be disappointed.