Devils and Dust

Expat - I'm with you. I can't wait to hear the new album. I've seen Bruce in concert 22 times so far, and plan to see him on this tour as many times as I can get away with.

Mike

Mike,

I think I have seen him 21 times - first show was in London on the River tour. I thought the Rising tour was one of the best - so impactful. After the Tom Joad tour me and my mate tracked him down to his after show restaurant and met him which was a great experience - we were the only fans there as well.

I doubt for this one that he will come down to Oz, so looks like I will need to get a business trip to the US!

Adrian

Adrian - 21 times and living in Australia is impressive. I'm spoiled living in New York, because he frequently starts and ends tours with extended stops in New York and New Jersey. If you like Bruce's music, there is no better performer in the world to see live. I have no idea if he plans on making it down to Australia, although I did hear rumors that he is planning on hitting Europe. However, at this point it is not clear if he will be touring with the ESB this time. Good luck on arranging that business trip.

Mike

any chance he'll end up back in Rochester(NY) again??...saw him there in '03 and was blown away...smaller venue with a blue collar crowd.

Mike - I have only been in Australia for the past eleven months.

Prior to that I have spent all my time in the UK. Saw him 19 times in the UK and twice in Holland.

It goes something like this (this adds to 20 - can't remember off top of my head where I have lost one)

River Tour - 1
Born USA Tour - 4 (inc Independence day show)
Tunnel of Love - 4
Human Touch Tour - 3
Tom Joad - 2
E Street Band Reunion Tour - 4
Rising Tour - 2

For this tour I understand it is without E Street Band - I have three choices
1. go back to Europe for a home visit to tie in with the tour
2. tie into a US business trip
3. sit here and sulk - we'll see!

I have been to hundreds of concerts and as you say he is wonderful live. To me these have been 20/21 of the best nights of my life.

I was so impressed with the Rising Tour shows and thought that the band just gelled even better than I have seen them before.

If I get To the US it could well be NY - maybe see you there!

Cheers

quote:

Originally posted by Naimed-In-NY:
Expat - I'm with you. I can't wait to hear the new album. I've seen Bruce in concert 22 times so far, and plan to see him on this tour as many times as I can get away with.

Mike

Mike - did you get any tickets to the tour? Got a business trip but to the Hong Kong which is no bloody good for the tour.

New CD comes out in Australia on Sunday - two days ahead of the US. Know where I'll be when the shops open.

Adrian

Any truth in the suggestion that DualDisc technology is crap and a big comedown from a standard CD, let alone the HDCD issues that we've had from Springsteen of late?

Oh, and no doubt there will be those here who want to hear of plans for a vinyl release!

Graham (a mere five-timer for Springsteen live)

Adrian - I totally struck out on tickets. I tried without success to get tickets to his shows in Boston and New Jersey. Both shows sold out in a matter of minutes. (I heard rumors that the New Jersey show and one in Dublin, Ireland sold out in less than a minute but I don't know if that is true.) Frustrated, I logged onto a couple of sites for internet ticket brokers, but couldn't locate a single seat selling for less than $1,000 USD (the better seats were going for upwards of $2,000 USD apiece). Needless to say, I took a pass. The only bright spot (for me) is that Bruce is virtually certain to loop back to the Northeast. On a full tour it is not unusual for him to play 20-30 dates in the New York/New Jersey region. (I think he could play five days a week for a year in this region and still sell out each night.)

I would love to hear a review of D&D if you care to post one. We have to wait until Tuesday, April 26th to get the album.

Graham - I heard that D&D only is coming out on dual disc (at least in cd format). I've heard that some dual discs do not satisfy red book format, so I'm a little worried it won't play in my CDX2. (That would be crushing for me, although it certaintly wouldn't be Naim's fault.) Hopefully, it will play. If not, I do know that a vinyl version is being released and I will pick that up.

Regards,

Mike

Mike -
I have it at home now!! First thing of note is that the Australian version is not Dual Disc but rather on two discs - one DVD, one CD.

Played the first track and thought was excellent. Here is a review from the english Daily Telegraph. Will report back when I have had a listen.

Adrian


Bruce Springsteen
Devils & Dust
Columbia, £12.99

The title track of his new album, Devils & Dust, sets a sombre mood, with Bruce Springsteen evoking the climate of fear that has descended on America in the wake of 9/11 and implicitly questioning what their warlike response has cost the nation's soul.


Stripped down: Bruce Springsteen
The sense of Springsteen continuing the exploration of big political themes from his 2002 masterpiece The Rising is misleading, however. The song also functions as a character study of an American GI in Iraq, which is what links it to the rest of this understated collection.

Most of these songs pre-date The Rising. This is where Springsteen's muse was taking him before 9/11 temporarily knocked him off course. It feels like a sequel to 1995's subdued and intimate The Ghost of Tom Joad. These are more tales from a lost America, evoking a hard nostalgia for less complicated - if no happier - times.

He seems to have drifted further southwest, picking up a country accent along the way. Far from the urban automotive heartland of his early work, Springsteen sings of horses and old cowboys, workers and drifters, men who can't escape the choices of their pasts but who seek small joys in momentary release from tough lives. If Steinbeck remains an influence, you can also detect the landscape lyricism and Western themes of Cormac McCarthy.

The instrumentation is simple, acoustic-based, and Springsteen's singing voice is unusually high and clear. His melodies don't travel particularly far, modulating around a couple of minor blues notes and perhaps escaping briefly into a gospel chorus. If there is a criticism, it is the lack of mystery in his writing. Everything is on the surface. This is the kind of album you can digest in one listen.

It is the first Springsteen album to be labelled with a "parental advisory" sticker for the forensically exact language he employs describing a lonely man's encounter with a prostitute in the song Reno, which in turn evokes memories of a lost love.

If this largely melancholic, ruminative collection feels like minor Springsteen, every now and then he still pulls out a detail or a flourish to remind you that he is working at a level way beyond most of his contemporaries. Neil McCormick

I only have one album from Springsteen (Tunnel of Love) which I love very much so I went ahead a pre-ordered my vinyl copy of Devils & dust - it's due out April26.05.

FWIW here is the Indy's review. Not great!

Each to his own obviously. I've seen a few other reviews and by and large they've been extremely positive. Doesn't sound as though it's a barrel of laughs though.

I gave it a run through this morning and there are some really good tunes on it.

I know that this will in the player a lot this year as I am a big fan.

It is not an E Street Band epic but I am pretty happy with what I have heard so far.

Got it today. UK version is a CD plus DVD. Have played it through once and wasn't hugely impressed. Will leave it a few days, then try again.

Graham

Just picked mine up over lunch. In the US, it is one of those dual-discs, which I've never had before. Played the first four songs in my car on the way back to work. Liked most of the songs, although the version of All the Way Home by Southside Johnny & the Asbury Jukes off their Better Days album is much, much better (Bruce wrote it for Southside back in '91). That being said, I also was pleasantly surprised how (relatively) uptempo the first four songs sounded - I was expecting something more sedate like The Ghost of Tom Joad.

Anyway, what I really need to know is whether this dual-disc thingy will play in my CDX2. Has anyone tried it? I've got about five more hours of work left, but it would be real nice to know that I'll be able to play the CD on my Naim system when I get home. Thanks.

Mike

I am intrigued by some of the live and album reviews here. I apologise in advance for sounding slightly negative but I have been watching Bruce since 1979 and recent tours have frankly been dull in comparison to say the peak of the Born In The USA tour. Indeed, I walked out of The Rising gig at Old Trafford cricket ground as it was, frankly, lacking in the communucation skills of old (that feeling of someone playing in your front room and holding a conversation with you that he always managed so well in the largest arenas) and rather over-long and er, well, dull actually. Walking outside I was struck by just how many long-standing Bruce fans had done exactly the same (approx. 10 songs from the end of the set). This wasn't related by the timing of public transport by the way this was major disillusionment judging from all the comments that one could not help but overhear.

To put that in context I am a fan of the Rising and thought it a great return to form.

The new album seems to have got reviews suggesting it's a little dour. I disagree and have to say I was also pleasantly surprised by the tone, however, it would be a brave man that suggested this to be a good album anywhere on a par with the years' best or that it contained any songs that could be described as major. Certainly the title track and about three or maybe four others cut the mustard but it has the feel of the Tracks boxed set - put out to fill a gap rather than being the next major release by a major artist. The remaining tracks lack any of the melody or lyrical depth of Nebraska or Tom Joad and seem to me to be filler. Unfinished, poorly arranged home demos if you will.

I appreciate that may seem a little harsh but I think that reviews generally have tended to bear this view out. This is a minor release and I certainly won't be recommending it to anyone but the diehards who would buy it regardless.

Mike

Mike

Thats the sort of review that is really useful. 'Tom Joad' gets an occasional play in our house but much of the rest of his ouput leaves me cold, or worse.

You saved me a few quid!

Bruce

On first listen this is a very good album very much in the mould of Nabraska and Darkeness on the edge of town. I love bruce when he is at his most downbeat; unfortunately he does sound like Dylan on one track which lowers the tone!

Being a Springsteen nut, my review will be biased. However, I really like this album. It will never be mistaken for Born To Run, Darkness on the Edge of Town, or any other "classic" Bruce album. Although I'm still getting used to D&D, it does not sound as strong as Nebraska, which is a stellar album, albeit different from "rocking" Bruce. That being said, D&D has some really good songs and, although the sound purposefully is sparse, the songs are more uptempo than The Ghost of Tom Joad, which probably is the album it be compared too most frequently. Anyway, if you like Bruce, you definitely should give this album a try.

There - I tried to be as impartial as possible. However, as a Bruce fanatic, I am psyched to have some new tunes to play and I've been listening to D&D a lot since it came out.

Mike

Dual Disc????????? WHY, WHY, WHY???

I can practically gurantee that Naim will not recommend using this with their players. It's not even the same dimensions as a cd.

And as far as sound quality is concerned, Jon Atkinson of Stereophile ripped it apart saying it was the equivolent to a 5 or 6 year old cd.

The Boss' management effed up on this one.

Aric

Good review from today's Sydney Morning Herald


The Boss tells affirming stories of lives gone horribly wrong.

Bruce Springsteen, Devils & Dust (Sony)

This album begins with a man who has his "finger on the trigger/but I don't know who to trust" wondering as he waits in the "dirty wind blowing devils and dust . . . what if what you do to survive/kills the things you love/fear's a powerful thing".

The album ends with a man dreaming of his wife as he is about to cross the Rio Grande, a man who we know, from the first lines of the song (which tells the story in reverse), will be found when "for two days the river keeps you down/Then you rise to the light without a sound . . . the turtles eat the skin from your eyes, so they lay open to the stars".

Between those songs, usually backed by little more than bass, guitar and occasional splashes of backing vocals and colouring instruments, Bruce Springsteen explores the nature of faith and fear, hope and death. Not in the abstract but in the messy, unclear and not always resolved reality of lives seen in transition, their stories told in quietly poetic tones - as rich in religious imagery as they are packed with natural detail - which feel free of flourish.

There are the man in Reno who when visiting a prostitute clings to the memory of his former girlfriend, saying, "She took off her stockings, I held them to my face/She had your ankles, I felt filled with grace", and the street boxer in The Hitter knocking at his mother's door and asking to "lie down for a while/And I'll be on my way".

But there are also the young black man, whose mother now has a local drug dealer as her lover, planning an escape to a Midwest plain in Black Cowboys, and Christ consoling Mary in Jesus Was An Only Son.

Bleak? Not really. Unlike the bare bones folk balladry of The Ghost of Tom Joad and Nebraska, the two Springsteen albums most likely to be compared with this one, Devils & Dust has shards of hope. The father in Long Time Comin' sees a chance to build anew as he lies next to his pregnant wife, and in the train rhythm blues of All I'm Think' About there's joyous expectation.

Low-key and intimate, rooted in folk and blues, Devils & Dust is a masterful album of storytelling and of heart and bone.