Devils and Dust

Some days, I just want to listen, because there's nothing much to say. Today was one of those. And the music playing in my office above the tumult of Lexington Avenue was Bruce Springsteen's new and dark journey through the middle-aged American mind, Devils and Dust.

It's wonderful, his best work in years, better than the Ghost of Tom Joad, superior to the rushed 9/11 anthems of The Rising. In Devils and Dust, Springsteen completes a long artistic journey - from writing about people that he knows, to creating fully-formed characters he imagines. This record is his most literary work; the words leap off the page of the liner notes, the stories carry more weight than the melodies, the people seem so real.

Take Black Cowboys, the story of a kid from the Bronx who reads about the black cowboys of a previous time out west, and rides the rails to meet them. It's a tale of confronting fear and hopelessness by reaching for a longer, wider horizon and it begins with this wonderful description:

Rainey Williams playground was the Mott Haven streets where he ran past melted candles and flower wreaths, names and photos of young black faces, whose death and blood consecrated these places.
Rainey's mother said, "Rainey stay at my side, for you are my blessing you are my pride, it's your love here that keeps my soul alive, I want you to come home from school and stay inside."

But like all Springsteen characters, Rainey keeps moving in a land crossed by highways and train tracks. You know, Springsteen laid aside a career that mainly avoided directly political involvment last year to appear with John Kerry and to oppose George Bush. On those appearances, he pulled out his songs of the downtrodden. They're good, but they're the product of a younger man - a guy from New Jersey who was newly-rich, a successful father, happy with his American life.

This Springsteen has finally taken that next step; it no longer matters in the writing how much money he has, how happy his private life his, how great his buddies in the E Street Band are. He's not writing about his own journeys down the dark highway, his cars, his women. He's fully involved in the role of the creator of fiction and poetry and prose and song. My favorite song so far is Matamoros Banks, a story on the surface about Mexican immigrants, but really a poem about choosing advancement over love:

Each year many die crossing the deserts, mountains, and rivers of our southern border in search of a better life. Here I follow the journey backwards, from the body at the river bottom, to the man walking across the desert towards the banks of the Rio Grande.

For two days the river keeps you down
Then you rise to the light without a sound
Past the playgrounds and empty switching yards
The turtles eat the skin from your eyes, so they lay open to the stars

Your clothes give way to the current and river stone
'Till every trace of who you ever were is gone
And the things of the earth they make their claim
That the things of heaven may do the same

Goodbye, my darling, for your love I give God thanks,
Meet me on the Matamoros
Meet me on the Matamoros
Meet me on the Matamoros banks

So far, the critics don't like it - too dark, not accessible, and certainly not likely to pull the failing recorded music industry out of its nosedive. Too bad. Because Devils and Dust reignites some the promise of Bruce Springsteen that he's delivered on it fits and starts: the kind of storytelling he exhibited in those early John Hammond CBS sessions, doing a rambling Mary, Queen of Arkansas. Those were rhyming dictionary concoctions of a 22-year-old, but there was an alternative reality there worth exploring. Now, Springsteen's a 50-something North Jersey squire - not a skinny kid guitar player. But this work is reminiscent of those days three decades ago, a time when he was labelled the next Bob Dylan by the man who discovered the original. When you listen to Devils and Dust, you're hearing Bruce at his most Dylan-like. And man, it's worth the journey.

UPDATE: Fred likes the record.

UPDATE II: Still in heavy rotation on the Watsonian iPod. Also, good reads in Slate and the WSJ on the record and Bruce's staying power and status.

Comments

[Tony Alva]

Most of my life, certainly while living in the NYC area, I disliked Springsteen a great deal. 'Born In The USA' was being overplayed and it was/still is a very bad record. I was too young to understand most of his earlier stuff, and since I was into hard rock and early heavy metal at that time, it wouldn't have mattered if I did.

Four years ago, my neighbor here in Atlanta put 'Nebraska' in the changer during a raucous (i.e. too many beers and glasses of wine) round of 'Cranium' and my mind changed instantly. My wife got pissed because I wasn't paying attention to the game any longer, and being the wisest amongst all of them, the game was suffering. I was like the monster character in "Young Frankenstein" when he heard that violin dirge playing. A most triumphant record.

I have a couple of Dylan classics inbound on the Amazon.com train (Trickster has me giving them a look), and I've got 'Tom Joad' and 'Devils and Dust' coming along with it.

I'll be cranking these records this weekend while finishing work on my daughters play house. Can't wait!!!

[Barry]

TW – It figures that you would gush over a new Springsteen album, especially one that’s dark and pretentious. He really touches your heart with that stirring caricature of life on a tough Bronx Street that neither of you have ever or will ever experience. Guess it’s always better to feel good than do good, eh, bub?

Barry

[Tom W.]

Barry ya nutjob, I have indeed visited some Mott Haven streets - and some in Bedford Park, the Concourse, Kingsbridge Heights, Williamsbridge, Pelham Parkway, Hunts Point Throgs Neck - working on newspaper stories - so you swung and missed, pallie.

[Tom K]

Tell us more about your adventures at Hunts Point, Tom, wouldya? A

nd Barry, geez, I thought I gave Tom a hard time; you oughta chill. If he bothers you that much, go to what you regard as a more sincerely "progressive" blog. Me, I'll stay here and criticize, 'cause it's too much fun to stop, but if I ever get as worked up as you seem to be, I hope someone will give me the advice I'm giving you.

[Ken]

Standing with Barry on this one - there's a big difference between "visiting" a street and experiencing it as its inhabitants do on a daily basis.

[Doug K]

I give Springsteen a great deal of credit for trying - his compassion has always been one of his most attractive characteristics. However here as with Ghost of Tom Joad, he's writing only about an imagined world, not a known and vivid one, and it does not move me. That may of course just be my problem.

Minor Bruce anecdote: the only time I've seen him was at a concert in Zimbabwe, with Peter Gabriel, Sting, and Tracy Chapman. PG appeared not to notice or care that the audience was mostly white kids from S. Africa, and lectured us on the evils of apartheid. Bruce talked about the difficulty of fighting evil systems from within, trying not to be conscripted into the armies of the wicked. It was clear that he'd thought about it and could empathize - it moved me profoundly.
(Sting and Tracy didn't say anything that I remember).

[Bernie W]

I've listened to "Devils and Dust" three times and still can't understand more than four words Springsteen is saying or singing. What the hell is he saying anyway? Can someone please tell this man to get the mush out of his mouth. The CD is going back tomorrow.

[allan]

i am off to see bruce next week in rotterdam for my 21st time, i liked your comments about devils and dust but i think you are to much a dylan fan to mabye appreciate what bruce does for his fans.

i am a big bs an e street fan and love the 78 stuff but i also love what time has done and like the way racing sounded afew years ago,

my tickets came in today and tears came to my eyes (i am 36 male) i going again
i do not agree with you that the rising was overrushed, and mabye we could talk later,

see ya
allan

[allan]

tom watson

was he not a great golfer once

[Tom K]

Not the last time I went out with him, Allan.