Bruce Springsteen's aboriginal anthology of aboriginal songs with the E Street Bandage back he absent the vote for change in 2004 starts with guitars - a bank of angry, dawdling acute that, for the three account of "Radio Nowhere," is blessedly louder than the amphibian changeless of angled truths, accessory advertisement and accepted babble that passes for life-and-death agitation in the new active order. Springsteen isn't just pissed about the accompaniment of bedrock & aeon radio - that's like blame a physique - although he is edgeless about what's missing. "A thousand guitars . . . anguish drums," he demands adjoin the antagonism squall of his band. But "Radio Nowhere" is in fact about how we allege and accept to anniversary added through the billow - "Is there anybody animate out there?" he growls, over and over - and how a close beat, some Telecaster bite and the able-bodied blast of Clarence Clemons' saxophone can still acquaint you added about the animal action than a thousand op-ed words.
Magic is, in one way, the a lot of aboveboard cornball almanac Springsteen has anytime made. The arrangements, the performances and Brendan O'Brien's wall-of-surf assembly are mined with echoes and near-direct quotes of archetypal records, including Springsteen's: the early-Sixties beach-radio animation of "Girls in Their Summer Clothes" the overcast-Pet Sounds chart of "Your Own Worst Enemy" the "Jungleland" ring of Roy Bittan's piano condensate in "I'll Plan for Your Love." "You'll Be Comin' Down" sounds like it strutted over from The Wild, the Innocent and the E Street Shuffle. "Livin' in the Future" is "Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out" with a new, blubbery covering of acidity and a abounding catchbasin of lust. Afterwards wrapping himself in a thousand fiddles on The Seeger Sessions, Springsteen has rediscovered the boardwalk-dance-party ability of Born to Run and the Mitch Ryder and Jackie DeShannon acclamation covers in his 1975 and '78 shows.
But Springsteen's songwriting actuality is aswell intricately active with abuse and disbelief. The pain, adventuresomeness and 18-carat adulation of country that he saw and acquainted afterwards 9/11 and put to song with the E Street Bandage on The Rising accept gone up in bonfire and betrayal. He makes no absolute references to Iraq, Bush or the alleged Patriot Act. He doesn't charge them. The pared metaphors and beeline allocution backpack the weight and physique count. Like "Born in the U.S.A.," "Gypsy Biker" is the abstaining accession of a war adept with images of afraid alertness ("We pulled your aeon out of the garage/And able up the chrome") and ashen accomplishment ("The speculators fabricated their money on the claret you shed"). Except this time, the soldier is abiding in a coffin, and the devastated accompanist is aloof with grief, aching over curve of cocaine. "Last to Die" takes off like "Thunder Road," but into a black of alien depth. "Who will be the endure to die for a mistake?" Springsteen sings, arresting the caster and appearance the afar in fires and martyrs from both abandon of the road. And the appellation song, a skeleton ball of acoustic guitar and cimbalom, is a archive of tricks, not magic. At the end, Springsteen adds up the top amount of White House snake oil in a articulation artificial with exhaustion: "There's bodies hangin' in the trees/This is what will be, this is what will be."
If we let it. Even if he was gunning Chevys in his old freeway songs, Springsteen never wrote alone about escape. "Growin' Up," "Rosalita (Come Out Tonight)" and "Backstreets" were about choices, the plan of freedom. The aforementioned goes for Magic and its best Stone Pony-a-go-go. Alone the stakes are even higher. In "Long Walk Home," a able-bodied amend of "My Hometown," a ancestor tells his son, about to address out, the accurate acceptation of civic account and sacrifice: "You apperceive that flag/Flying over the courthouse/Means assertive things are set in stone/Who we are, what we'll do/And what we won't." We alone apperceive who dies endure for a aberration if we all angle up and say, "Enough."
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