I am a huge Bruce Springsteen fan, and have nearly all of his CD's, and I am still a huge fan, but I don't think this CD is one of his best. Don't get me wrong - Springsteen has a knack for telling stories about people who have been through hard times and who have been through the darkest parts of life, and he has a knack for making us feel these characters' pain, but, I think the tone of the music is too low keyed - it's almost as if the music on each track sounds the same.

But, still worth listening to.

Twelve and a half years after the release of his debut, Greetings from Asbury Park N.J. and two years after The River was delivered, Bruce Springsteen gave us Nebraska. This 1982 record represented an abrupt change in direction for this most popular of American artists. Springsteen's new course was so surprising and dramatic that you would be hard-pressed to find adequate words to describe it to a fan who had not yet been exposed. Gone are the horns; gone are Springsteen's electric guitar solos; gone are the anthems. We are no longer cruising in Jersey. We have moved to the mid-west and we are running from murder. Rock music is replaced by folk music - not gentle folk music either, but, rather, sparse music that is roots-driven, edgy and minimalist. We have Springsteen, his acoustic guitar and his harmonica. There is no-one else. On his prior recordings Springsteen told many stories that were not exactly uplifting. He wrote of economic and romantic hardships. On Nebraska he addresses violent death, the narrator's longing for a time when life was better and suicidal depression brought on by plant closings. The bleakness is unrelenting. The narrator of each song is at one stage of despair or another. Some suggest that the final cut, Reason to Believe, offers some hope. I don't think so. These people may think that they have a reason to believe but in reality they are done like toast.

If you love Born to Run or Born in the USA there is absolutely no guaranty that you'll appreciate Nebraska. By the same token, if you are turned off by Springsteen's "anthemic" rockers but enjoy, say, the moody cds released by Johnny Cash in his last years then this may be for you.. Nebraska doesn't represent "popular" music. These aren't background songs for a cocktail party! The record is not an easy listen. However, if you do play it you must listen. The power is in the lyrics.

If you painted pictures from these songs, they'd be in starkest black and white with splashes of red. The music itself is stark--just Bruce singing with his guitar and a harmonica howling sharp.

The title track is probably one of the scariest songs I have ever heard. The opening lyrics will make your hair stand up on end:

"I saw her standin' on her front lawn just twirlin' her baton
Me and her went for a ride sir and ten innocent people died"

If Bruce isn't talking killers, he's talking cops. In "Highway Patrolman", Sgt Joe Roberts has got to put up with family trouble:

"Now ever since we was young kids it's been the same come down
I get a call over the radio Franky's in trouble downtown
Well if it was any other man, I'd put him straight away
But when it's your brother sometimes you look the other way..."

There's poor kids watching how the rich live in "Mansion on the Hill," driving in the dark in "Open all Night," and a whole lot more. It's harsh, but in some cases hopeful. This is definitely not a party album or one you would listen to if you were needing to be cheered up, but the storytelling's some of the most solid around.

Rebecca Kyle, June 2008

Take your car on a late afternoon and drive to a wide open place far from the city, with short wild vegetation and rocky mountains in the background. Find a spot beside the road where to park your car, get off and walk to some old abandoned rusty car frame.
Sit down, while the sun is setting and the soft wind is clanging against and through the metal.
Listen. This is Nebraska.

The atmospheric sound of this classic album is made up of only voice, guitar and harmonica. The stories are told in compelling imagery over stately melodies. Although the sentiment is deeply melancholic, the promise of redemption is never entirely absent. Places like Lincoln, Atlantic City, Ohio, Michigan, New Jersey, Johnstown, Wyoming and Linden Town provide the setting for these tales of nostalgia, trouble and heartbreak.

If you've seen the 1973 movie Badlands (Sissy Spacek and Martin Sheen) you'll have a more profound understanding of the title track. Both it and Mansion on the Hill are slow and mournful whilst Atlantic City has a lilting beat and Johnny 99 is edgy with its nervous guitar riffs that also infuse State Trooper, a song that thematically relates to Highway Patrolman.

Springsteen's characteristic car and road imagery surfaces in Used Cars with its poignant childhood recollections as well as in Open All Night, an uptempo rock song, the only one on the album. The line "radios jammed up with gospel stations, lost souls callin' lost distance salvation" reminds me of Far Away Eyes by the Stones, a tongue-in-cheek country song on Some Girls. For some reason, it also makes me think of Hank Williams.

Guilt, remorse and the yearning for redemption are expressed in vivid oneiric imagery on the haunting track My Father's House. Reason to Believe concludes this outstanding album on an uplifting note with the observation that people ultimately do find meaning. It echoes a similar hope earlier expressed in Atlantic City, the notion that perhaps everything that dies someday comes back. Its simplicity, profundity and power make Nebraska a masterpiece and a highly influential work.