Bruce Springsteen: A Critical Review: MVD
Though not officially sanctioned by anyone within a stone’s throw of Springsteen, this critical appraisal does offer up insight, ranging from anecdotal to philosophical, from a wide range of players, including his biographers, early band mates, rock critics, and contemporary singer songwriters. Using footage culled from BBC archives and snippets from VH1 performances, it weaves together a tapestry that covers roughly ’78-82, the heady days that made records like Darkness at the Edge of Town and Nebraska possible, not to mention The River. However, the arc also does include a few brief overviews of records before and after, but the deep, profound, analytical views cut their most incisive furrow across the period in which Springsteen, thrust into the limelight with sudden national upswing, has to grapple with the ins and outs of integrity, storytelling, and professionalism as the heat turns up, both from an expectant public and a money hungry industry. Sure, he cut his first huge hit “Hungry Heart,â€? but the film neglects to mention that he might have intended it for the Ramones. It also ignores how he gave songs to Patti Smith and the Knack, at a time when most Americans knew him as a brooding, salt-off-earth, surf city New Jersey poet laureate, not a proto-new music icon. (more…)
There’s been a lot of talk about this band, maybe too much talk, so I’ll try and not lean on other’s critiques, but needless to say, this does feel like parts of the 1990s with the cellophane ripped off, mashed, and then resculpted with a Neurosis blueprint stapled up on a pegboard wall nearby. Perhaps it’s just those mechanical sounding drum effects, like slapping bits of tuned garbage cans. None of the songs are given titles, giving them an anonymous vibe, a something and nothing edge, as if what we are really listening to is simply tonal movements within a larger fringe orchestra leaking radium that flowers and fans out like well-grooved prog-rock dynamism. It’s infinitely controlled and precise but has a sinewy musculature as well, bending and bowing. Sure, there are surefire moments that seem to mold redux shoegaze alt rock sharpened to a metallic allure, like a shuddering aluminum version of any number of Creation bands and neo-noise bands from an era that popped birth to the Internet. Oddly, enough, some tracks actually remind me of later period Soulside, from Washington DC, or other Chicago post-hardcore acts like Jesus Lizard: twisting, jolting, fuzzed-laden bass, hypno-guitar geysers, and vocals that serve up ambiguous word-yelps, not lyrical depth. Just imagine a splatter poem by Jackson Pollock in slower, modulated motion.
Forget about Americana music having a “rugged bearing, bloodhound eyes, and honey-baked drawl.� In this case, the roots of their raising has a classical sensibility and an ethereal tone more reminiscent of Maggy Star than the soundtrack Down from the Mountain. That being said, the whole approach feels natural, however learned. Their promo asserts that “Mountain Home promulgate an earthen visage and wooden sound capable of bleeding sap into the veins of city dwellers…� Hmm, that sounds like a metaphor gone awry, but indeed, don’t expect anything resembling primitive or naïve from these folks, since they offer refined, lonesome, and long as hell narratives (the average song length is seven minutes here). In fact, tracks like the traditional lament “Omie Wise� resembles some of the more delicate work of the Swans in their post-noise period, when Jarboe’s hypno-voice held sway. The approach is laconic, measured, and atmospheric, weaving the story slowly and imbuing it with a coating of lofty meaning. “Nottamun Town� is another kind of standard, conditioned to feel a little less like down in the holler and a little more like Nick Drake. Don’t turn here for a raw front porch yarn but for a music academy rubric of high mountain style and reinvention.
This is basically repackaged goodies that Coalesce have tossed out for awhile now, like their Led Zepellin cover 45s, though with an extra morsel here and there too, like Black Sabbath’s “Juggernaut.� In all, I’m not one to say that I really care if these dudes can ride the wild with Zeppelin or not. To me, it’s like listening to all those old cover albums devoted to Kiss, and the like. It proves that somehow they can mix the stoner, anthemic, dinosaur rock’n’roll with noisy hardcore crunch, but I’d rather just dip into the catalogs of High on Fire and Nebula to get my surfer woodie tweaked. Maybe that’s why I like their Boy Sets Fire tracks a bit more, seeing how they are kind like a two-headed monster, one tuneful and sincere in a heavy emo yearning, one abrasive and blasted with sandpaper to show that there is a ying-yang dichotomy to every feeling under the melting skin. Plus, you get an original tune, a Get Up Kids cover (perhaps the oddest choice of all), and an Undertow one too.
Adored by Robert Christgau, tour partner of Son Volt, covered by Cat Power, and even around long enough to have a mid-1960’s album on Folkways, Hurley is nuts and bolts kind of folk, a flannel-wearing kitchen sink kind of Americana straight from the piney woods, without pretense or jive. There’s a shade of bayou in the whispery “Dying Crapshooter’s Blues,� about a reckless, broken-hearted Jesse who finally gets shot by the cops. “Lonesome Graveyard� gives way to small waves of electronic piano, giving the song a minimal backdrop to wallow in the dour circumstances. “El Dorado� picks its way through alliterative lines, narrating the futile tale of bold nights in which men chase look for a fabled city of gold beneath shadowy moons barely hovering above mountains shimmering in myth only. The whole vibe is very off-the-cuff and unrehearsed, like Townes Van Zandt porch sessions. 
In an age of videos killing radio stars, the Clash fussing on Broadway, and squiggly Basquiat graffiti, Lene Lovich was a girl from another planet, a slightly less askew version of avant-garde pop, dominated by Laurie Anderson and Nina Hagen. However, this did not make her second-rate. In fact, her big hit “Lucky Number,â€? by far her most FM-friendly pop readymade, did little justice to her exploratory nature, whimsy, and neon-bathed post-urban shtick. In fact, beware the loony extended keyboard solos on this disc, which turns the cogent prowess of the song into a free-for-all! Aiming for a vocal matrix with styles resembling modulated ambulance sires, mutant bird songs, and bleating Dada sound-pomes (the song “Bird Songâ€? does give it away!), Lovich comes across as crooked music for an age suffering disco blues and serious post-punk malaise. Looking like a precursor to Bjork, meaning a gothy bag-lady glamour puppet, she is a sorcerer, a conjurer, and she is bemusing as Adam Ant indulging in faux decadent cabaret. The music is all surface movement – shimmering and skittering organ, rivet-gun drumming, fluid guitars — an amalgam of surf, kitsch, jungle, and new wave. Sure, at times the footage is awash and bleeding, or full of muted video chromatics, and occasionally the images pixilate due to what may be an odd transfer from the original master. The sound is a bit muddled, but the multiple angles and limber editing keep the pulse and action on pace, and the crowd seems ever eager to disappear into her deep den of well-constructed pseudo-madness. In all, it’s an hour’s worth of early 1980’s mishmash eccentricity.
In the hallowed ground of roots music, Iris Dement sprouts from the American grain with “stark dignity,� to borrow a phrase from William Carlos Williams, meaning that reviewers cling to phrases like “raw� and “high lonesome.� However, this might paint her as a quaint dimestore-era folkloric oddity, when really she is simply sonorous and awing when most are willowy and second rate. Unlike so much current country dross delivered by Nashville, which seems glitzy, harlequin, and stuck in weepy-street mode, or comes off as simply sore and petulant, Dement cuts a different kind of mold. Her voice is acutely alchemical: a blend of from-the-gut Harlan County “primitive� poetry resounding with images of fireflies, whippoorwills, and hometowns, front porch Loretta Lyn style determination to not settle down and give up, and a willingness to stretch the bounds of country rock and gospel while not selling her soul to the cheapest dollar. Perhaps that’s why both John Prine and Merle Haggard are so smitten by her. Unafraid to look at war and commemoration (“There’s a Wall in Washington�), sexual abuse and subsequent shame (“Letter to Mom�), or religion, she is a female Honest Abe, forging a path that may originate in a personal, reflective, inward gaze but also extends to the parameters of our national debates. 
As his own kind of uncontrived man in black fusing workaday world weariness with impassioned poetic nuance and sensibility, Russell has become a unique American voice, bar none. His molasses-voiced vignettes have borrowed from Walt Whitman and Paul Bowles, his eagle-eyed observations have a cut a wide path from Navajo rugs to butter factories, and his style has always felt both casual and controlled, like a teller of tales bent on undercutting the expected. Lately, he’s returned to a sound reminiscent of his 1980’s Tom Russell Band days, surging with topical fare like “Who’s Going to Build Your Wall?â€? Like Anthony Bourdain’s show at the Tex-Mex border, he avoids petty political squabbles, aims to drop the pretensions, and looks squarely at the people who cook our food, wax our floors, mow our lawns, and wipe our babies’ mouths. In addition, he’s both dissected and detested Nashville (“I ain’t heard a good country song since 1973…God’s gonna burn down Nashvilleâ€?), yet he’s been on Letterman four times, proving that scorched earth songwriters with grit, candor, and a knack for Americana-infused poetics can still have a mass audience of sorts. All the while, his admirers have recorded dynamic and wide-varying versions/visions of his work, ranging from Johnny Cash and Joe Ely to Iris DeMent and, take a breath, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, the godfather and muse of the San Francisco renaissance and the Beat Generation. Did I also mention he is an avid and admired painter who also published a book of letters with the grizzled and beloved Charles Bukowski? So, needless to say, if you have one part of your wounded heart in the rich tradition of songs forged around the fire of narrative explorations, and one part buzzing in the spontaneous meat grinder of the universe ala Kerouac, then Russell is the man to zero in on, with ears wide open.
It’s been twelve years since this band hooked mid-1990’s listeners with their BYO debut, which, it seems, is a distant kind of past now, clouded by the intervening years of band haggling, big ugly corporate cut-throatness, and even worse, the crushing influx of drug abuse, like manacles holding back the men of this band, who finally re-emerge now. Sure, they are a different breed of punk now, aiming for a more mature sound that feels like newer Social Distortion and Generators, and they don’t try to escape honesty either, as “Start Overâ€? attests, noting that the singer wants to “take all these memories and lift them off my shoulder.â€? Whether or not this rock’n’punk approach will appeal to their old fan base, who knows, but at least we’ll have to look ‘em square in the eye and heed their directive to “take me as I am.â€? As a sign of their change and growth, they do a rather uncomplicated, tough but melodic, and keen version of Springsteen’s bareboned “Atlantic City.” No, don’t think this is like Face to Face ironing out hammy versions of Blondie. This feels in-tune with Springsteen’s tense, writerly tale and his cynical Jersey saga, adding just enough bar rock that would make the best years of the Smithereens jealous. On “Sunday Eyes,â€? they rely on some simpler — ringing verse-chorus bouts — an ode to saying the hard things and making the saddest songs. Not exactly Steinbeck, but pleasant. In contrast, the darker, more self-exploring “Ghost-Likeâ€? exposes the ability of people to deny their own metamorphosis into raccoon-eyed drug users flopping flat-out on dirty beds while “satellite-high.â€? Eventually, it all catches up, and they end up “on a bended knee,â€? copping a plea. It’s a slow, churning, sober look the black hole of dope and unpleasure. 
With an airy chanteuse style, Bunyan re-emerges from the era of early Bowie, Marianne Faithful, and Serge Gainsbourg with these singles and demos offering up their ultra-lite folk pop etudes. Imagine miniskirts, pixie haircuts, hordes of hairspray, Beatle boots, and growling Vespas permeating a Swinging London slowed down by opiates, or perhaps even lysergic acid, if song titles like “I’d Like to Walk Around in Your Mind� and “Pink Sugar Elephants� might attest. Granted, these days, this like seems the territory of Scandinavian alt hipsters, like Ane Brun, minus the mind-altering substances. Choice tracks include the delicately shaped ether of “Winter is Blue� and the bare, terrifyingly calm wonder of “Wishwanderer.� To increase the sense of authentic LP vibes, you can even hear surface noise/tape hiss on many tracks, so just think of incense swirling on a heavy-ass Pioneer hi-fi. “Autumn Leaves� is an ode to sitting in one’s room, waiting for a lover, and listening to the rain and wind. The grief is obvious, as is the imagery, but it’s sung with willowy ghost-séance ambience so that the mind might forget the simplicity of it all. “Leave Me� is equally tucked in on itself, but “she don’t care anymore.� She’s immovable and immune, softly serving her muse. Granted, after a handful of songs, a listener feels embedded in the middle of a Wes Anderson sequence, where everything is off a bit, and some inner dysfunction is being painted with these barely ebbing strokes. To some, it will be like tiny gold foil, sparkling and shimmering, but to others it might simply be a sappy, sentimental swing into mopey, cherubic song styling.
