DISPATCHES: ‘The Rising’: Music for uncertain times

DISPATCHES by Hank Kalet: Bruce Springsteen’s new album addresses America’s feelings of uncertainty

   "Empty sky, empty sky

I woke up this morning to the empty sky"

— Bruce Springsteen, "Empty Sky"
   The story goes like this: Bruce Springsteen was sitting in his house in Monmouth County eating breakfast on Sept. 11 when he saw the news report of the attack on the World Trade Center. He drove to a bridge near his house where he could see the towers and watched them come down.
   Like all of us, he tells Time magazine in this week’s cover story, he was shocked by the events. But unlike most of us, he has turned these events into art.
   I remember catching Springsteen on the "America — A Tribute to Heroes" telethon that ran the Friday after the attacks. He played a new song that seemed to have been written for all of New York and all of America. "My City of Ruins," written for Asbury Park, takes the form of a church hymn, opening with lines that seem to be directly commenting on Sept. 11: "There’s a blood red circle / On the cold dark ground / And the rain is falling down." The song takes us through nearly deserted streets as the congregation chants "Rise up, come on rise up" and the narrator asks, "How do I begin again?"
   I’ve been haunted by the performance since that night, by its intensifying sense of hope as the narrator prays, for hope, for faith, for love, for strength, by its swelling sound, repeating "With these hands" over and over as if to emphasize that it is up to us to make things right.
   "My City of Ruins" is the final track on Springsteen’s newest disc, "The Rising," which harkens back to earlier Bruce records while helping us to move into the future.
   It is a serious record, a raucous one, one that in sound, in feeling, is different than almost anything else on the radio today. The lyrics are dark — they deal with death and tragedy, often told from the point of view of the rescue workers and families of the fallen. "You’re Missing" is a moving portrait of loss ("Everything is everything / But you’re missing") set against a melancholy saxophone line. "Paradise," which opens in the mind of a suicide bomber and moves into the mind of someone dealing with tragedy, raises questions about the belief that we can find happiness "on the other side / Where the river runs clear and wide."
   While some of the songs maintain that dark mood throughout, "The Rising" is ultimately a joyous record, a playful one. This is what allows the record to stand out, to rise up, as he sings in "My City Of Ruins," its hopefulness and its urgency. It is a record that believes in the here and now, the present time, which makes the point that we need to take advantage of what we have while we have it.
   "Mary’s Place" is about a rocking house party that takes place a short time after an unnamed loss, replete with a driving horn section and a Clarence Clemons saxophone solo that seems to jump off "The River."
   In "Waitin’ On A Sunny Day," he sings "Hard times, baby, well they come to us all / Sure as the tickin’ of the clock on the wall," but he also reminds us that love, that the connection between people "Lifts away the blues when I rise."
   In "Further on up the Road," he sings "But I got this fever, burnin’ in my soul / So let’s take the good times as they go / And I’ll meet you further on up the road."
   And then there is "Let’s Be Friends (Skin to Skin)," a song about two people drawn together, possibly for one night. He sings: "Don’t know when this chance might come again / Good things got a way of comin’ to an end / Don’t know when this chance might come again / Good things got a way of slippin’ a-way / Let’s be friends, baby let’s be friends."
   Much of the music on the album sounds like it was written to be played live, a quality present in all of Springsteen’s best work. I already can hear Bruce stretching out "Mary’s Place" or the band chugging through the disc’s best song, "Worlds Apart," which tells the story of a love affair between a Westerner and a Muslim and features backing vocals by Pakistani singer Asif Ali Khan and his group. (This sensibility also contributes the album’s lone flaw, a tendency for some songs — "Into the Fire" and "Mary’s Place," most notably — to go on a little too long.)
   "The Rising" is the record Springsteen fans have been waiting for since the mid-1980s, big, expansive, cathartic. Bruce has regained his rock voice — he told Matt Laurer on the "Today Show" last week that he had lost confidence in it in the mid-1990s — in a very public way.
   This is an album of soaring, muscular guitars, crunchy rhythms, big, bold drumbeats. Organist Danny Federici is front and center in a way he hasn’t been in years, perhaps since "The River." And Clarence’s sax playing, while somewhat limited in scope, adds the exclamation point to so much of this disc as it so often has in the past.
   In some ways, this is a familiar sounding record, as if an old friend has returned at the precise time he was needed most.
   I remember back in September, when the nation was gripped in sadness and anger, my wife asked me what I thought Bruce Springsteen might have to say about the events. He was careful to say nothing, showing up at the various benefit concerts and playing music, but avoiding the big statement, staying away from the kind of easy connections that I think made people like Bono and Paul McCartney seem a bit maudlin.
   Even now, Bruce has avoided the big statement, letting his music speak for him. And he has produced a collection of songs so moving, so uplifting, so necessary to the time. And he has done so without the jingoism of Neil Young’s "Let’s Roll."
   There is anger on this album ("I want an eye for an eye," he sings in "Empty Sky") but it is anger tempered by grief and consolation, by the need to keep living and to keep believing.
   "A little revenge and this too shall pass," he sings on "Lonesome Day." "This too shall pass, I’m gonna pray / Right now, all I got’s this lonesome day."
   What is remarkable is that Bruce acknowledges the anger, the desire for blood, but does not give in. Instead, in songs like "Worlds Apart" and "My City of Ruins," he opts for reconciliation. He calls for the walls between us, the walls that separate us, to come down so that we can rise up in faith, in love, in hope.
   It’s significant that he closes here with "My City of Ruins," recast as a gospel prayer, the dueling pianos of Roy Bittan and Danny Federici filling the song’s empty church with a new congregation.
   "People are brave," he told Ted Koppell last week. And in that bravery we can find the strength to keep going even in the face of unspeakable tragedy. And that’s ultimately what this record is about.
Hank Kalet is the managing editor of the South Brunswick Post. He can be reached via e-mail at [email protected]