Springsteen-Style Rock

Bruce Springsteen gets a bad rap these days. "Springsteen-style rock" has become a pejorative in some circles. Yet even those who dislike his more bombastic material--e.g. albums like Born in the U.S.A.--ought to give his '80s masterpiece, Nebraska, a couple spins. That album will make a fan out of anyone who appreciates stark, minimalistic folk songs dealing with the lives of the weak and dispossessed in America. Nebraska is the moment Bruce Springsteen arrived as popular music's closest analogue to Raymond Carver. Springsteen attempted to build on the sounds and themes of Nebraska in later efforts: 1995's The Ghost of Tom Joad and 2005's Devils & Dust. Both albums have their moments, but neither succeeds as well as Nebraska. Few do.

Several bands have inherited or appropriated Springsteen's instinct for blue collar story-songs, though they have tended to do so while rocking a lot harder than Nebraska, more akin to Springsteen's Born to Run. Philadelphia's Marah took up the mantle and wore it proudly on their 1998 and 2000 releases: Let's Cut the Crap and Hook Up Later Tonight and Kids in Philly, respectively. Both are excellent albums.


The latter's "It's Only Money, Tyrone," which deals with a man who "slapped his lover / Put a bullet in her brain and threw her body off the bridge," only to be done in by the discovery of her body, recaptures the desperation of Springsteen's "State Trooper." Both songs see their subjects' lives for what they are: pitiful, yes, but also ultimately unchangeable. Like the great Greek tragedies, this is where they get their poignancy. These people are who they are because of how they've lived their lives, and they've lived their lives the way they have because of who they are. [Direct link to .mp3 of "It's Only Money, Tyrone"]

Enter The Hold Steady's Boys and Girls in America, one of the very few albums of 2006 with zero filler. It follows in the tradtion established by Springsteen, and picked up by Marah, of chronicling the lives of regular people to the sound of straight-up rock music. The album opens with the memorable line: "There are nights when I think that Sal Paradise was right / Boys and girls in America have such a sad time together." Their "sad time together" is the focus of this and the next 10 tracks, which are suffused with Catholicism, drugs, and relationships. Over half are downright brilliant. I wouldn't say the same about many other albums released last year.


Stop here and Boys and Girls is an exceptional album. But its most extraordinary moments are all the more impressive played one after another, juxtaposing its greatest virtues: Boys and Girls is musically diverse, yet cohesive; the lyrics are colloquial, yet literate ("Lost in fog and love and faithless fear / I've had kisses that make Judas' seem sincere"); each track stands solidly on its own, yet collectively they tell a story. It's easily the best of last year, and it shows, yet again, that "Springsteen-style rock" isn't a pejorative. [Direct link to .mp3 of "Stuck Between Stations"]

Once again, .mp3 files posted here are meant as samples only, which are up for a limited time. Please support the artists if you like what you hear. Marah, Kids in Philly [Amazon, eMusic] & The Hold Steady, Boys and Girls in America [Amazon, eMusic]