Tramps like Us: Nebraska

Mad respect for Bruce Springsteen for going in the opposite direction as The River. It would be tough to sound like the "opposite" of the sounds found on The River, but Springsteen found a way to do it. The party is over, and it's been replaced with Springsteen playing acoustic guitar on a four-track recorder. If Nebraska is the opposite of my favorite Springsteen album, does that mean Nebraska is my least favorite Springsteen album? Probably, but with the same qualifier as The River: "so far."

I still don't really know who I'm writing these Springsteen posts for. Am I writing for the superfans, the casual fans, or the critics? Do I need to write the legend and myth about how this album came about, or do you already know the tale? Or do you not care? I care, but not more or less than I'm supposed to. Here's the cliff notes version. Springsteen found himself with a genuine pop hit in "Hungry Heart," and he planned on following it up with another E Street Band album, so he made some demos. But the full-band arrangements weren't coming together as he'd hoped, so he just said fuck it, and released the demos. That's Nebraska.

So if this really is my least favorite Springsteen album, then two things you need to know. One is that it's all relative, and that I prefer my least favorite Springsteen album over many favorite albums by other artists. Two is that these are my own preferences, and they are warped by a musical journey that has always, always prioritized upbeat over downbeat. It's something I can't seem to shake, no matter how hard I've tried over the past couple decades. Springsteen purposefully released an album that speaks to almost none of my sensibilities. Like I said, mad respect for doing this. I've just never been able to connect like I would like to. That's on me.

Which is a shame, because when you listen to the lyrics, this is definitely a fascinating album. And, like, don't I fashion myself a storyteller? So why wouldn't the album in which Springsteen pushes most instrumentation to the side in order to focus on the tales spun appeal to me? It doesn't make sense beyond the caveman explanation of "slow bad, fast good." I hate that it's like that. I wish I could listen to "Highway Patrolman" and hear the pain, the feel a searing sense of empathy in the story of a man who prioritizes family over his own morals and is only just starting to regret it. But on most days, I lack the concentration to find that core value, and mostly just let it wash over me as a sparse acoustic exercise without giving it the deserved thought.

See, you knew this was coming, because you read in The River write-up how forgiving I was of the "unimportant but fun" rockers on that one, "I'm a Rocker" and that kind of thing. The critics who claimed that Springsteen wasn't doing enough with those gems on Sides Three and Four of The River were probably the same critics who marveled that he had done away with all that on Nebraska and was down in the deep, dark trenches of pure songwriting. That's the opposite of what I'm saying, but I think we can both be right here, me and the strawman. The River's deep cuts are fucking great. Nebraska is fucking art.

I just need to get there. I'm sure when I'm old and gray and have witnessed a lot more destruction and have felt a lot more pain, Nebraska will finally hit for me. As it stands now, I'm still tied to the block party atmosphere of The River. I am trying to be more optimistic about life than the narrator on Nebraska is.

This is decent timing, writing about Nebraska, for a few reasons. I am teeing up the conclusion of this column, approximately 56 weeks from now, when the final and most recent Springsteen album will be memorialized on this blog—Nebraska '82, a box set technically, but we'll be concentrating on the legendary electric version of Nebraska. Long thought to be just a rumor or fabrication of the rabid minds of hardcore fanatics, the electric version is seeing release in just two and a half weeks! And the movie about the making of Nebraska, starring the jabroni from The Bear as Bruce, is out a week after that! In many ways, this blog post is me jumping the gun on Nebraskamania!!!!

I'll limit my speculation, but I gotta imagine that the electric version is going to be a lot more appealing to me than what we hear on the classic acoustic version. Which is all fine and good. I'll be happy to get good Springsteen music, I'm not too picky. But I don't want that version to usurp this original, regardless of my own person valuation of each. I think Nebraska is fine. I also think it's fucking important. He could've banged out endless versions of The River for the rest of his career, and I'd love it all. But in that hypothetical, the legend of Bruce Springsteen wouldn't burn as bright. He's a rocker, baby, he's a rocker... but Nebraska proved that he's an artist. That's important for his legacy, if not necessarily for my ears in this moment.

Song for the "Tramps like Us" mixtape: "Used Cars"