Customer Reviews

Badlands: A Tribute To Bruce Springsteen's Nebraska

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(13)
3 star:		(9)
2 star:		(9)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

In the musical wasteland of the eighties which (for the most part) was filled with overblown synthesized arrangements, Bruce Springsteen committed the unthinkable when he released "Nebraska", a stark collection of songs recorded in his living room on a 4 track cassette recorder. Accompanying himself with an accoustic guitar and a harmonica, Springsteen produced a brilliant chronicle of the American working class. Like a modern day Woody Guthrie, he captured our broken dreams, our dark side and our quest for a better life with deceptively simple words and melodies. This apparent simplicity imbued "Nebraska" with an eerieness reminiscent of Robert Johnson's recordings or Presley's Sun recordings. The magic of "Badlands" is that, in part because the producer insisted that all the artists had to record their song on no more than 4 tracks, the eerieness of the original was updated but preserved. Synthezisers and drums were used this time around, but only to add a touch to the music, not to take it over. Stand out tracks include Hank Williams III's hillbilly revamp of "Atlantic City", Crooked Fingers' haunting version of "Mansion on the Hill" (the lead singer's voice is strikingly similar to Springsteen's), Los Lobos' cajun treatment of "Johnny 99" and Aimee Mann & Michael Penn's magnificent cover of "Reason to believe", one of Springsteen's finest songs. "Badlands" also offers three bonus tracks which Springsteen wrote during the "Nebraska" sessions but did not release until later on, including a stunning reading of "I'm on fire" by Johnny Cash. How fitting that one of Springsteen's own heroes should look back and pay tribute to his "student". When he delivers the line "I can take you higher, I'm on fire", it takes a somehow different meaning than that intended by Springsteen which shows how perfectly crafted Springsteen's songs were. Not so simple after all.This is music for the long run and a perfect companion to the original album. Sheer beauty...

What a disappointment. The "Nebraska" album is a Springsteen watershed: haunting (downright scary at times), provocative, and a complete aural u-turn from its fine predecessor, "The River." Perhaps I expected too much from this "tribute" lineup; sure, the songs are solid but they uniformly lack the charisma that Bruce Springsteen so naturally brings to them. Only Johnny Cash is in that league here. Raul Malo, Ani DiFranco, and Chrissie Hynde do what they do best: run good songs through the de-flavorizer for an entirely unfulfilling experience. Aimee Mann and Michael Penn make a good go of it, as does Deanna Carter, surprisingly. Sad to say this is the first time I've ever heard Los Lobos phone one in. Hank III's voice eerily recalls that of his brilliant grandfather, but his reading of "Atlantic City" is awkward until it switches to a minor key. Too little, too late. Too bad. Save your money and and put it toward the Japanese import of the original "Nebraska." The sound quality on that is light years ahead of the disc Columbia offers. Get it, put it in your car, and drive the Jersey Turnpike in the middle of the night. That's the way the album is meant to be heard! (And if you want to hear the best cover of "Atlantic City," check out "The Band's Greatest Hits, Vol. II.")

Bruce Springsteen's Nebraska is brilliant and is one of the most important singer/sonwriter albums to come out of the 80's. Badlands is a tribute to that album. There are reasons to buy it and there are reasons to save your money.

Reasons not to buy it: 1. Hank Williams III doing Atlanic City. He does it his way but it just doesn't work for me. 2. Raul Malo doing Downbound Train. Raul sounds like he is playing this song in a bar in the background of a scene from the TV show LA Law. I don't know if that makes sense, but it causes me to shudder.

Reasons to buy: 1. Ben Harper doing My Father's House. His bluesy/soulful voice is absolutely beautiful. 2. Son Volt doing Open All Night. When I first bought the CD I told a friend it was one of my least favorite tracks. It's an example of listening or reading something and not getting it, and then feeling a little stupid later for missing it. Son Volt took an acoustic Springsteen rocker and made it into this slow, pedal steel in the background, sweeping song that makes you ache at it's simplicity and beauty. One of the best, I'm driving by myself in the middle of the night, in the middle of nowhere, songs ever. 3. Johnny Cash 4. Deana Carter doing State Trooper. I just like the way she does it.

If you only buy albums because the whole album is great don't buy Badlands. If you sometimes buy albums because they have at least three great songs, then buy this album.

One would think that the spare, straightforward nature of the original compositions would lend themselves to interesting cover versions. Sadly, not so.

Many of these covers are needlessly obtuse. Ani DiFranco's "Used Cars" comes close, but rather than her usual intensity and directness, we get meandering weirdness. Chrissie Hynde had disappointed me for the first time in her entire career.

Los Lobos, Dar Williams, Johnny Cash and Raul Malo do serviceable jobs... but really, this album just made me want to hear the original stashed in my collection.

Sorry - this was a waste of cash.

These performances are introspective and "tributes", so if you're expecting to roar down the highway with the windows open, booming these tunes to fill in the gaps between the wind and the dark, you'll be disappointed. If you're looking for sensitive, brooding, and thoughtful interpretations of these songs, this CD is for you.

Dar Williams' "Highway Patrolman" strips this song and it's emotions even barer. Deana Carter's "State Trooper" is reason enough to purchase this CD. It sizzles like nothing else I've heard her do. Ani DiFranco's "Used Cars" is a stark and disquieting interpretation, all the better. Johnny Cash's "I'm On Fire" needs to be heard at home without distraction to appreciate the warmth in this man's voice. There's lots more here for the careful listener.

Springsteen's album NEBRASKA is one of the most haunting and remarkable pieces of music to come out in the past thirty years. As a unified work, it's about the disillusionment and sadness of what happens when you give ordinary people an American dream to look for...and what happens when they can't find it. It was recorded all on a four-track, with minimal instrumentation beyond guitar and harmonica.

So now Sub Pop's released an odd sort of tribute album--a tribute to NEBRASKA. If any album deserved a tribute, this would be the one: but if any album also deserved a better treatment, this would also be the one.

The impression I get from listening to this is how influential Springsteen was on a lot of these artists...and by how pitiably far they miss the mark. Ani DiFranco's "Used Cars" has a lovely guitar part, but her vocal meanders between spoken-word nonsense and off-tempo crooning. Son Volt's "Open All Night" is a silly narcoleptic redneck take on the original, and Chrissy Hynde and Adam Seymour's version of "Nebraska" is equally goofy, with a distorted guitar drone in the background. Probably the worst thing on the album is Hank III's absolutely offensively horrible country-swing version of "Atlantic City". The original is my favorite song, a lovely haunting piece about love and desperation, and Hank III turns it into an absolutely wretched piece of uptempo steel-guitar pap.

A few of the tracks shine: Dar Williams' thoughtful take on "Highway Patrolman" is the best alt-country piece on here. Los Lobos' "Johnny 99" is a little hell-raiser, probably closest to the feeling of the original. One of the best tracks is a bonus one, a cover of a song not included on the original album due to space--Raul Malo's "Downbound Train", which sticks pretty close to the original (which ended up on BORN IN THE USA). Another notable track is the version of "Reason To Believe" by the husband and wife team of Aimee Mann and Michael Penn. It's pretty catchy, which is more than you can say for most anything else on here.

What comes across is how much NEBRASKA influenced the current crop of alternative country--and how absolutely incapable the current crop of alternative country is of producing work that has the subtlety and emotionality that Springsteen puts in every nuance of the original album. In fact, very few of the artists coming out these days are capable of that, and every time I hear NEBRASKA it reminds me of that.

Perhaps I'm too emotionally close to NEBRASKA--I discovered it about three months ago and have been listening to it nonstop ever since. But it's still extremely disappointing to see what these artists have done with this album. I would have liked to see less of the boring indie scene represented, and more individualistic artists--I can see Nick Cave doing wonders with this material, or Tori Amos, or Tom Waits, or even Sarah McLachlan. I have heard a live outtake from this album--the Counting Crows' version of "Atlantic City" and it was so superior it wasn't even funny.

This album just reinforces my dissatisfaction with the state of indie music today. Maybe if you're really into these sort of self-satisfied artists, you'd like this: but if you enjoyed the kind of thing Springsteen did with the original, I'd give this a wide berth.

"Nebraska" was Bruce's darkest, most poetic, album. It also was, in many ways, his most impressive work, although personally, if I could only have ONE Springsteen album on the proverbial desert island with me, it would be either "Darkness on the Edge of Town" or "Born to Run" (I guess I'd have to flip a coin between these two). Anyway, the bottom line is that "Nebraska" is a great album (spare, uncompromising, brutally honest, tremendously insightful, harsh, awesome), critically acclaimed, but sadly (a commentary on the music-buying public, not the quality of the recording or the artist), Bruce's least popular album.

Anyway, now along comes a "tribute" album to "Nebraska," and I guess my first reaction is: it's about time that people finally start recognizing what a great album "Nebraska" is and even pay tribute to it. Cool!! However, having listened to "Badlands" now half a dozen times or so, I remain somewhat ambivalent. On the positive side, I really AM glad that "Nebraska" has been recognized by so many artists as worthy of tribute. Also, many of the covers are interesting, well-done, and entertaining. Personally, I liked Ben Harper's beautiful blues/soul/folk version of "My Father's House" very much. I also think that "Mansion on the Hill" (Crooked Fingers), "Reason to Believe" (Aimee Mann and Michael Penn), and "Open All Night" (Son Volt) were well done, and that "Highway Patrolman" (Dar Williams) was really interesting as performed by a talented female singer.

But on the negative/mixed-feelings side, I'm not sure just WHAT on earth to make of Johnny Cash's "I'm On Fire" cover (my first reaction was nervous laughter, although the more I listened I guess it sort of grew on me), and a few others ("Johnny 99," "Downbound Train," "State Trooper") I just found uninspired, pale imitations of Bruce. And then there is Hank Williams III, doing SOMETHING, although god knows WHAT, with "Atlantic City!" Yikes!

In sum, although this is definitely a mixed bag, in the end I come down on the positive side, and would recommend "Badlands" as an entertaining, interesting, and at times even inspired, tribute to Bruce Springsteen's great album, "Nebraska."

I often wonder why I keep buying these tribute albums in second hand cd stores? mostly they are played once or twice on my cd player and then forgotten. This one is the exception, all the versions here are deep and interresting, some work better than the others, and although none is better than the originals, still the songs work well and the album is consistent enough to make you want to listen to Son Volt, C. Hyndie and J. Cash again and again. A winner.

Unlike most reviewers here, I suspect, I bought BADLANDS before I bought NEBRASKA. I loved BADLANDS. Johnny Cash's contribution is one of the most disturbing songs I've ever heard ... wonderful, but disturbing. There is not a track that I don't enjoy to some degree or another. I listened to it over and over for weeks, off and on. I read the story of the making of the tribute album, saw how well regarded Springsteen's Nebraska was, and figured, what the heck, I'll go buy the original.

I was disappointed ... there is not a track on the Nebraska album that I prefer to a corresponding track on the Badlands album. Maybe that's just a function of what I was used to, how I had trained myself to what the songs were "supposed to" sound like.

I'm not a sophisticated, scholarly "musicologist". Most times I can't tell you who wrote a song, or what the title is, or technical aspects of the music. I don't even own a lot of CD's. But I own this one, and I'm glad of it. I enjoyed (no, scratch that, ENJOY) BADLANDS, and I recommend it to your attention!

I deeply love this album -- and I love the original as well. The only way I can understand all the negative reviews for this album is by suspecting they were written by those who couldn't listen to these interpretations as their own things. I especially love Hank III doing "Atlantic City," husband/wife duo Aimee Mann and Michael Penn doing "Reason to Believe," as well as Dar Williams and Son Volt's tracks. If you're the kind of person who can't enjoy a movie based on a book because it's not the way you envisioned it in your head, skip this album, but if you have the capacity to appreciate things for what they are (and not dislike them for what they are not), then this is a great album.