My car’s radio antenna is broken, so I am stuck with CD’s. I’ve been playing Bruce Springsteen’s Wrecking Ball album on a loop for a week and it just gets better with every replaying. It is such a complete album. It opens (We Take Care of Our Own) and closes (We Are Alive) with messages of aspiration and hope, but what lies between is truly breathtaking in its expression of bleakness and feelings of betrayal. I’ve never heard Bruce angrier than he is in these songs: “Easy Money,” “Shackled and Drawn,” “Jack of All Trades,” “Death to My Hometown,” “This Depression,” and “Wrecking Ball.”
Having taken the listener about as far down as they can endure, he gives them a break with “You’ve Got It,” a diversionary song about an authentic woman. And then he begins to lift you back up.
The first step out of the pit is “Rocky Ground.”
In the context of the overall arc of the album, Rocky Ground is a masterpiece. It summarizes what has come before it:
Tend to your flock or they will stray
We’ll be called for our service come judgment day
Before we cross that river wide
The blood on our hands will come back on us twiceRise up shepherd, rise up
Your flock has roamed far from the hill
The stars have faded, the sky is still
Sun’s in the heavens and a new day is risingYou use your muscle and your mind and you pray your best
That your best is good enough, the Lord will do the rest
You raise your children and you teach them to walk straight and sure
You pray that hard times, hard times come no more
You try to sleep you toss and turn the bottom’s dropping out
Where you once had faith now there’s only doubt
You pray for guidance only silence now meets your prayers
The morning breaks, you awake, but no one’s there
All the while, the female backup singers are intoning, “We’ve been traveling over rocky ground, rocky ground.”
And then it happens. Bruce begins to sing, “There’s a new day coming. A new day’s coming. A new day’s coming.” Things are going to turn around after all. He’s not going to leave us to our despair.
What follows are two songs of hope and redemption: “Land of Hope and Dreams” and “We Are Alive.”
“Land of Hope and Dreams” harkens back to “Jack of All Trades,” where Bruce promises that he’ll provide for his woman somehow, but it also brings to mind some of his classics like “Thunder Road” and “Born to Run.” In the end, it’s a man and a woman in love who can stand up to the world.
Big wheels roll through fields
Where sunlight streams
Meet me in a land of hope and dreamsWell, I will provide for you
And I’ll stand by your side
You’ll need a good companion now
For this part of the ride
Leave behind your sorrows
Let this day be the last
Tomorrow there’ll be sunshine
And all this darkness past
In the end,”Dreams will not be thwarted…Faith will be rewarded.”
The album closes with “We Are Alive,” a stunning insistence that the people lying in graves who have died to make this world a better place are really still alive because they provide the inspiration we’ll need to move forward.
There's a cross up yonder on Calvary Hill
There's a slip of blood on a silver knife
There's a graveyard kid down below
Where at night the dead come to life
Well above the stars they crackle and fire
A dead man's moon throws seven rings
We’d put our ears to the cold grave stones
This is the song they’d singWe are alive
And though our bodies lie alone here in the dark
Our spirits rise
To carry the fire and light the spark
To stand shoulder to shoulder and heart to heart
A voice cried I was killed in Maryland in 1877
When the railroad workers made their stand
I was killed in 1963
One Sunday morning in Birmingham
I died last year crossing the southern desert
My children left behind in San Pablo
Well they’ve left our bodies here to rot
Oh please let them knowWe are alive
And though we lie alone here in the dark
Our souls will rise
To carry the fire and light the spark
To fight shoulder to shoulder and heart to heartLet your mind rest easy
Sleep well my friend
It’s only our bodies that betray us in the endWell I awoke last night in the dark and dreamy deep
From my head to my feet my body’d gone stone cold
There were worms crawling all around me
My fingers scratchin’ at an earth black and six foot lowAlone in the blackness of my grave
Alone I’d been left to die
Then I heard voices calling all ‘round me
The earth rose above me
My eyes filled with skyWe are alive
And though our bodies lie alone here in the dark
Our souls and spirits rise
To carry the fire and light the spark
To fight shoulder to shoulder and heart to heart
To stand shoulder to shoulder and heart to heart
We are alive
The album doesn’t contain any truly great songs to compete with Springsteen in his prime, but like Darkness at the Edge of Town it is collectively a treasure. It may be his best album since Nebraska, and the E Street Band’s best album since Darkness.
