Wednesday, August 30, 2006
Nebraska
Awhile ago, I got Bruce Springsteen’s Nebraska. I finally gave it a good listen today. I can’t believe what a great album it is. I have to admit that I was quite skeptical about it. Bruce is known for rocking the house and this album an acoustic album. That just makes me think of Bob Dylan, who always makes me go “ick.” So I really hadn’t given the album a good listen because I figured it would suck. Well, I was completely mistaken. It’s a GREAT album, quickly jumping into my Top 50. (That’s quite a feat, given how many albums I have right now.)
I’d heard a few songs off Nebraska before and I really liked them. So I don’t know why I hesitated so much to listen to the full album. Maybe it’s because the songs that I’d heard came off Bruce fantastic Live 1975-1985 album. And with those songs, it was more about immersing yourself in the whole Springsteen concert experience. I didn’t realize how great those songs would be in a completely different context.
Nebraska is pretty much Bruce, his guitar and his harmonica. Like I said, I’m not into that bare-bones approach very often. But the sparseness of the music really made the lyrics stand out. I usually couldn’t give a rat’s ass about lyrics. (That might explain why I like the Pixies so much. Their lyrics are frequently unintelligible, and when you can understand what they are, they don’t make any sense anyway.) But today I played the album while I was trying to figure out a spreadsheet and I just really got into the songs, which are incredibly depressing. I guess that seemed really fitting since the spreadsheet I was working on was a complete mess and I just wanted to shoot myself in the head.
What I like about the songs is that they reminded me of Johnny Cash songs. They’re depressing. They’re about criminals. But most of all, they’re just really good stories. A lot of people find it weird that I like Johnny Cash, especially when you consider how much I hate country music. But Johnny Cash had a way of telling a story about a criminal or a jerk that made you empathize with him. And like any great story-teller, what made Johnny Cash great wasn’t the story so much as how the story was told.
On Nebraska, Bruce Springsteen managed to become the same type of story-teller. By keeping the music simple, you focus on the story. And Bruce’s gravelly voice perfectly conveyed the desperateness of the stories’ characters. And for a little while, you feel yourself transferred from your bleak cube and your stupid spreadsheets to Nebraska. Where hopefully, just hopefully, one of those criminals will shoot you in the head.
I’d heard a few songs off Nebraska before and I really liked them. So I don’t know why I hesitated so much to listen to the full album. Maybe it’s because the songs that I’d heard came off Bruce fantastic Live 1975-1985 album. And with those songs, it was more about immersing yourself in the whole Springsteen concert experience. I didn’t realize how great those songs would be in a completely different context.
Nebraska is pretty much Bruce, his guitar and his harmonica. Like I said, I’m not into that bare-bones approach very often. But the sparseness of the music really made the lyrics stand out. I usually couldn’t give a rat’s ass about lyrics. (That might explain why I like the Pixies so much. Their lyrics are frequently unintelligible, and when you can understand what they are, they don’t make any sense anyway.) But today I played the album while I was trying to figure out a spreadsheet and I just really got into the songs, which are incredibly depressing. I guess that seemed really fitting since the spreadsheet I was working on was a complete mess and I just wanted to shoot myself in the head.
What I like about the songs is that they reminded me of Johnny Cash songs. They’re depressing. They’re about criminals. But most of all, they’re just really good stories. A lot of people find it weird that I like Johnny Cash, especially when you consider how much I hate country music. But Johnny Cash had a way of telling a story about a criminal or a jerk that made you empathize with him. And like any great story-teller, what made Johnny Cash great wasn’t the story so much as how the story was told.
On Nebraska, Bruce Springsteen managed to become the same type of story-teller. By keeping the music simple, you focus on the story. And Bruce’s gravelly voice perfectly conveyed the desperateness of the stories’ characters. And for a little while, you feel yourself transferred from your bleak cube and your stupid spreadsheets to Nebraska. Where hopefully, just hopefully, one of those criminals will shoot you in the head.
