I came perhaps a little late to Springsteen's music. It wasn't until he released “Born in the USA” that I took notice, but once I did I was hooked, and I went and bought all his albums, starting with the more accessible and known classics such as “Darkness on the edge of town”, “The river” and of course “Born to run”, then going after what I thought of as the lesser albums, the likes of “The wild, the innocent and the E Street shuffle”, and “Greetings from Asbury Park”. Although the last two made less of an impression on me than the first ones I bought, I still grew to like them and I even got his acoustic downbeat classic “Nebraska”, and thoroughly enjoyed that too. So it went, on past “Born in the USA” through to “Tunnel of love” (which a lot of Springsteen purists hate but I loved) and to the simultaneous release of “Lucky town” and “Human touch”, and I never had anything to complain about, never one of those albums bought that I regretted doing so, or even questioned why/that I had.
Until this one.
This was the album that changed Springsteen for me. It was my “Abacab”, my “Xanadu”, my “Brother where you bound”. It was totally outside anything I had expected or come to expect from the Boss, and it just bored the hell out of me, made me so disappointed and for the first time ever I questioned the idea of just running out and buying the new Springsteen album.
Was I mistaken? Was I naïve? I have only listened to the album the once, so no doubt I didn't give it a fair chance. Has time --- seventeen year since I heard it --- changed my opinion about this album? This of course is always the question we ask in this section, and to date the albums I've reviewed (or even, re-reviewed) here have generally stood up to my initial impression, and there are few if any I've listened to with older ears that have convinced me I made a mistake originally. Will this album buck the trend?
The ghost of Tom Joad --- Bruce Springsteen --- 1995 (Columbia)
It's not that I hadn't heard a low-key Springsteen album, after all. “Nebraska” is generally, throughout almost all of its run, as downbeat and dour as you can get. But I enjoyed that album, could see it for what it was, and treat it different to electric-based opuses like “The river” and “Darkness”, so why did I dislike (hate is too strong a word) this album so much? Was it because I wasn't expecting such an offering from the Boss? When I bought “Nebraska”, I knew what I was getting. It wasn't like I expected one of the more upbeat, commercial albums I had listened to up to then. But this was bought when it came out, so I, doing no research but simply seeing a new Springsteen on the horizon, jumped at it the way I used to when there was a new Marillion or Asia or Genesis in the offing.
Leaping before I looked? Quite possibly. It certainly took the wind out of my sails, I can tell you. But now that I've had a chance to think about it, and treat the album as perhaps it should be treated and not as I did treat it, will it open up like a under-developed flower? Or wilt like a weed in the sun?
From the first notes it's pretty obvious this is an acoustic, or mostly acoustic album, with a blast on a lonely harmonica and a softly-strummed acoustic guitar, slow, ticking percussion and even Springsteen's vocal low and muttering on the title track. Obvious comparisons to “Nebraska” can be drawn, but there's a more folky/country aspect to this album, with steel guitar, accordion, violin and of course harmonica added into the mix to create a distinctly un-rock album, and a big step back from his last, the abovementioned two-albums-released-at-once, “Lucky town/Human touch”. Tom Joad, I found out much later, is the main character in Steinbeck's famous novel “The grapes of wrath”, and from what I know about that novel (though I have to admit I haven't read it) this album reflects its spirit, in dark, doomy and dusty themes, feeling trapped and caught in a dead-end, the death of hope and a dark and bleak future stretching ahead like a dirt road to nowhere.
“Straight time” has more of the guitar heard on albums like “Lucky town”, on tracks like “The big muddy”, but it's a short song which then leads into a balladic “Highway 29”, which to me is more in the vein of “Highway patrolman” from “Nebraska”, with some nice understated, almost distant keyboards from E Street bandmate, the late Danny Federici, then things get more upbeat and rocky with “Youngstown”, but everything comes right back down to earth with “Sinola cowboys”, with another nod back to the aforementioned “Highway patrolman”, boasting some really nice mandolin and haunting keyboards. So similar as to seem almost identical, it's kind of hard to separate that and the ensuing “The line”, another slow, sour, bleak song, and without question you can hear the influence of “Nebraska”, recorded thirteen years previously, on most of the tracks on this album. “Balboa Park” has a little more of a folk feel to it, but I definitely still get the impression that too many of the tracks on this album sound like the ones that have preceded them, and there's little really in the way of variety. Hell, even “Nebraska” had “Open all night”!
There's a touch of the droning keyboard sound used on “My hometown” in “Dry lightning”, and it's at least a little different to the previous tracks, with Springsteen's voice stronger and more forceful than it has been, mostly, up to now, and “The new timer” keeps up this idea, with strong echoes of the title track from “Nebraska”, hard acoustic guitar and a tough, uncompromising vocal from the Boss, and a similar tale of unwarranted, pointless and directionless violence ---
”Someone killin'/ Just to kill” --- and like the songs on this album, and indeed those on the 1982 opus, it's concerned with bleak subjects: murder, fear, unemployment, poverty; the feeling of being trapped, trying to get out and find a better life. Hope holds hands with despair on this recording, but it's the latter which seems to triumph and lead the dance.
Some nice harmonica from Bruce on “Across the border”, another of the stronger songs, with accordion echoes from “Sandy” from his first album, which is nice, and also some strongly blueglass style fiddle from Soozie Tyrell, and a backing chorus worthy of Waters on “Radio KAOS”. Things run back in the direction of folk with “Galveston Bay”, and it ends on the folky acoustic short, “My best was never good enough”, which I have to admit kind of sums up this album for me.
“Nebraska” was a well put-together album that mostly followed a theme of dispossession, loss, regret and helplessness, and though those qualities are here too, I just feel that rather than make “Nebraska Mark II” Springsteen would have been better going for something different. Okay then, when I heard this the first time I wasn't really aware of, or ready to allow for, its many nuances and how different an album it was at the time to most of Springsteen's catalogue --- I wanted “Born in the USA” or even “Tunnel of love” --- but listening back to it now, it still does little for me. It remains an album that, although it has to be applauded for its honesty and its divergence away from Bruce's mainstream (and more popular: evidence the fact this was his first album to fail to break the top five, breaking a twenty-year run there for him) music, still has little to offer me and is an album I will in all likelihood be a very long time in playing again, if ever.
On admittedly only my second listen to this album, looking at it with the eyes of experience I can now say that I appreciate what Springsteen was trying to do, but it's really too close to “Nebraska” for comfort, and that's an album that really should be left in a class all of its own. Here, I think the Boss tried perhaps to improve on perfection, and that ghost may indeed still haunt him today. As for me, I think I've laid it to rest.
TRACKLISTING
1. The ghost of Tom Joad
2. Straight time
3. Highway 29
4. Youngstown
5. Sinola cowboys
6. Balboa Park
7. Dry lightning
8. The new timer
9. Across the border
10. Galveston Bay
11. My best was never good enough