Nebraska - Springsteen, Bruce (CD 1990)

Funny how the majority sees only one side of a thing. Take Bruce Springsteen, for example. The man has released a swarm of albums over the past thirty years, but his biggest commercial successes came with his biggest sounds. Born To Run and Born In The U.S.A. were both big records with a big band, including three guitars, drums, bass, keyboard/piano, and saxaphone, not to mention Springsteen's powerfully loud screaming voice.

But Nebraska, a modest and small record, was largely ignored by radio. And it happens to be Springsteen at his best.

Once considered to be inseparable from the Reagan years in which it was conceived and recorded, this tale of working class woe is every bit as relevant in the Dubya Dynasty. Ten tales of poverty, hopelessness, and desperation make up this masterpiece, each stripped down to its bare essentials, making for one of the most haunting and honest records anyone has ever put out. There are but three instruments here - an acoustic guitar, a harmonica, and a man's voice.

It helps that when Springsteen isn't screaming about his birth, his voice is gritty and hardened. This makes it easy to imagine these stories are actually being told by those who lived them, even in the case of the phenomenal title track about a crime spree that left ten dead in America's heartland. Long before Woody Harrelson and Juliet Lewis showed us Mickey and Mallory, Bruce Springsteen was asking the judge to kill him and his beloved partner in crime together. And it's hard to listen and not believe he's sincere. Twisted, but sincere.

Not everyone who is down on his luck in Springsteen's vision of Nebraska kills people, though the theme is repeated in the excellent "Johnny 99", and the "favor" that one indebted gambler in "Atlantic City" agrees to do for "this guy" he met last night leaves one guessing. Others, though, are simply struggling to get by, dreaming of the day when they can move into the "Mansion on the Hill" and never drive a "Used Car" again.

Nebraska is not without its apparent flaws. Several lyrics are repeated in various songs, giving the impression that it was released before it was ready. But in reality, this only helps to feed the honesty that permeates the album. These songs are straight from the heart, and if the repeating lyrics aren't evidence of Springsteen's passion about what he's saying, they are at the very least an indication that he had no interest in making a commercial album at that time. What you hear on Nebraska are demos that would, on any other record, be re-recorded, overdubbed, re-written, and polished.

But the world Springsteen was trying to showcase was already too overdubbed and polished, and people were suffering for it. There is an uncleansed mood here that fits the stories so well that they would suffer severely from the inclusion of the E. Street Band, indispensible as they are on other records.

This is not only a story album, but a reality check. Rarely does one capture a moment so brilliantly and truthfully as Bruce Springsteen's Nebraska.