Customer Reviews

Nebraska

5 star:		(124)
4 star:		(27)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

One of the truly great pieces of Art in American recording history, NEBRASKA explores the dark stories of the characters who chose to take to the road in THE RIVER.

They hit middle America and go crazy. Simple as that.

These are stories of killers and cops, truck drivers and, frankly, people who have been driven to such a degree that they can no longer find their way through the comprimises and grey areas that they find themselves swimming in.

I've always been fascinated by Springsteen's phrasing on NEBRASKA. "Me and her went for a ride, sir." There's always that "sir," or "mister," and the wording is sparse. To me, these songs sound like death row confessions.

To me, "Atlantic City" ranks as one of Springsteen's finest moment, a tough-as-nails story of a man comprimising his own morals/ethics in order to get himself and his wife out of a dying town--and considering the unimaginable in order to finance their escape. But he still needs to console himself, rationalize his decision, before he can live with it:

"I've been looking for a job but it's hard to find. Down here it's just winners and losers, and don't get caught on the wrong side of that line. Well, I'm tired of coming out on this losing end. So honey last night I met this guy and I'm gonna do a little favor for him...but I guess everything dies baby, that's a fact, but maybe everything that dies one day comes back..."

NEBRASKA is not a fun-time party album. It's dangerous to listen to it in your car at 3 a.m.. But it is a piece of perfection, a story of the cultural decay Springsteen and his characters found in the USA in 1982, stories of desperate people in bad situations. It is a record that will be just as vital and important in 100 years as it was upon it's release.

NEBRASKA is true Art of the highest order.

After The River became Bruce's first number one album, "Hungry Heart" became his first top ten song and a hugely successful world tour, one would expect his next album to be in a similar vein to keep up the momentum. Instead of a River clone, Bruce did a complete 180 and released the dark, brooding Nebraska. Bruce at the time was listening to Woody Guthrie and other depression era folk & blues artists and this album reflects those sounds. The album consists basically of just an acoustic guitar and harmonica and explores subjects such as murder, crime, loss and loneliness. The songs are all sung in the first person and that gives them an intimacy that is rarely felt from an album. Bruce would explore dark subjects on later albums ("Born In The USA" was original recorded for this album), but he never recorded them in such a bare and stark nature. On this album, Bruce asks alot of questions and dares you to search for answers. The search is well worth the time and effort.

My confession: I listened to this album for the first time around 1990 based on a friend's recommendation, and I was instantly converted. I had previously taken part in the backlash against Bruce Springsteen, the backlash that followed the stunning commercial success of "Born in the USA." "Nebraska" set me straight and gave me insight into what a masterful storyteller Springsteen is.

This album is Bruce all alone, without the E Street band. The songs are quiet and honest with a rough quality, and each one tells a story about people who somehow got left out of the American dream. "Used Cars" is the most touching to me, telling a child's perspective on his father's purchase of a used car, which is a powerful symbol of the family's lack of status or hope. "My Father's House" is equally powerful.

"Nebraska" is the clear predecessor to "Tunnel of Love." "Born in the USA" really seems like an aberration in Springsteen's musical development when you consider that it was released in the time between these two albums. Don't get me wrong. "Born in the USA" is a great album. But "Nebraska" is softer and far more haunting.

"Everything dies baby, that's a fact. But maybe everything that dies some day comes back."

Our journey is one of hard traveling--year in, year out. Bruce Springsteen's album Nebraska is filled with haunting and sometimes beautiful snap-shots of people who've come to the end of their rope. It is possibly his greatest recording (its either this one or its echo of a decade later: The Ghost of Tom Joad).

Each song on Nebraska paints a portrait or a chracter sketch of an individual facing some kind of crux in their life. Each song is a unique story told in varying narrative voices. Each speaks to the triumphs and the humiliations that make us human.

The strength of Nebraska is that the narrators of the songs are allowed to tell their own tales, there is no imputed right or wrong from the song-writer. Much like short-stories that grab you with the humanity and reality of the main character, these songs bring you into their world rather than merely telling you about them. In the drudgery, hard labor, and ever-present shadow of despair we meet people very much like us.

If I sound foolish in what I am about to say, I beg your foriveness and ask you to listen to a fool just a little while longer: despite the storm clouds that gather in these songs, I see them as great testimonies to the power of hope. Much like the Badlands mentioned in the title track (which I had the privilege of visiting this summer), the darkness of life, the bleakness that sometimes echos deep within us, suggest to me a the possibility--hell--the PROBABILITY of better days and better things. Hope takes some faith and both (hope and faith), without being rooted in love, are worthless.

But hope, like faith and love, are the only things that will never fail--even in the deepest darkness of the shadow of despair.

I give Nebraska my full recommendation.

I'm writing this review in the hopes that it will actually get posted. My last few reviews have mysteriously disappeared. So, here goes...

This is my favorite Springsteen release of all time. Certainly it can be contrasted to "The Ghost of Tom Joad." However, there is a certain auroa about this album that goes miles beyond any later attempts to recapture it. As we all can admit, there are just certain things about a time in one's life, about a "time" in history...that given moment when things are going as never before.....later attempts to recapture that experience fall slightly short. That's the case with "Tom Joad"---it can't, by definition, rise (or sink?) to this level.

This is man at his rawest. The most down and out. Perfect, as I always say, for driving endless miles through the night...either the mojave desert or the great plains, take your pick. Can a song about Charlie Starkwheather (driving with a sawed off .410) be played at any time other than 1am-4am? Maybe.

This album is it. Perfect lonely down and out music. The type that makes you want to open up a liter of ol' grandad and throw the cap away.

Worth noting, this album is INCREDIBLY well followed by either: (a) any Tom Waits' asylum release (preferably "Nighthawks at the Diner" ; (b) "The Boatman's call" or "Murder Ballads" by Nick Cave; and (c) "Live at Folsom Prison" by Johnny Cash.

Then, either turn the lights out and drink. Go to a smoky, lonely bar. (Try "Red's, on St. Charles--near Lafayette--in New Orleans) Or, get in your car...with a few semiautomatic weapons for safety---and drive, drive, drive.

Despite the album and title song, this album has little to do with Nebraska and more to do with the working-class mindset in American society. A wonderfully intelligent album and a huge statement by a man who has shown his versatility as an artist, I would start any Bruce collection off with "Born To Run", "Nebraska", and "Darkness On The Edge of Town". In the style of Woody Guthrie, Leadbelly, and Bob Dylan, Springsteen navigates through raw sound equipment and simple arpeggio patterns to create something boldly honest and real in the face of huge commercial success. You can tell Bruce must have locked himself up for a couple of weeks and hit a creative peak musically and lyrically, as this album stands as his most intelligent piece to date and an honest depiction of everyday life in the working-class realm. Fantastic, in my opinion, his best work.

"Nebraska" contains part of a multi-day recording session in Colt's Neck, New Jersey, during which Springsteen cut demos of new songs he had recently written, including many tunes which would later appear on his "Born In The USA" CD. He tried recording these tunes with the E Street band, deciding to release the original demo tape instead, and with good reason.
With his songwriting skills honed to a harrowing edge on this CD, the ambience of "Nebraska" is as chilling as the characters in his shadowy vignettes and their motives, be it revenge, redemption, or just trying to get ahead. (If you listen close, you can hear a chair squeaking on one track.)
This music is not for the faint of heart. Springsteen's howling harmonica, vocal echo, squeaking furniture, and first-person point-of-view tales of the indolent make for a frightening journey into the minds of his anti-heroes, making this CD one of the most convincing 'mocumentaries' of Americana ever waxed.
The tantalizing possibility of the existance of the Complete Colt's Neck Session CD would cause many a fan a sleepless night.

Powerful. Chilling. Beautiful. Moody. Sublime. Poignant. Masterful. Stark. Poetic. Heartwrenching. Funny. Raw. Minimalist. Subtle. Dangerous. Simply one of the greatest records I have ever heard.

You could go on and on about this one. The cover photo to start with: Who would have the guts to put a b/w blurry photo, shot out of the windshield of a car on the front of a record? Why isn't it color? Where's the focus? Where are the people? Why no nice scenery? Not interested in any of that here! It works so wonderfully well, as does everything about this true masterpiece of an album. The record which showed what Springsteen was really all about.

The stories, the people, the events he tells us about, they are so real. Mr. State Trooper: Please Don't Stop Me. You listen to that thing over and over again. The repetition of the bass chord of the acoustic guitar evoke the steady beat of rain and windshield wipers, the purring of an engine, traveling too fast in the night, on the run to or from--what?

Not really a song, more of a chant, it's a work of towering genius, one of the most evocative and transcendental things you could ever hear. He creates more with one guitar string and his own expressive voice than most musicians do with a full band.

This is the opposite of a commercial release. It's the equivalent of a great black and white movie, which, let's face it, most people don't like to watch anymore. But it is so true that in many ways the black and white is more colorful, more truthful, more expressive than full, garish color. Think "In Cold Blood", "Red River", "The Seventh Seal", even "Sin City".

This is about the only Springsteen album I listened to for years.

Glad to see he is now doing an acoustic tour, which I would much more likely go to. Thanks

This is one of those albums where the power does not lie in volume, but in the lyrics. I'm a newcomer to The Boss and his music. I thought I'd might as well give Nebraska a shot, and I must say, as I was reading the lyrics along with the music, the emotions in The Boss's words hit you hard. The indifference of the character on the song Nebraska, who's about to be executed, saying "...and I killed everything in my path", haunts you with it's soft, almost eerie delivery. It's a perfect intro of what's to come in the next 40 minutes on the album.

These songs are all about people driven to desperation through tough times, wishing they had more, and never has Bruce passed on these stories more effectively. The wording of the lyrics is guaranteed to have you picturing the stories unfolding, the best example being "Highway Patrolman", a story that would make anyone feel pity for the main character.

Musically, the songs are perfect in their demo quality style. The stories are really what the focus of this album is, and the emotions that come from these stories are where the impact of this album lies, the guitar and harmonica providing just the right texture for these songs, giving them a dusty, black and white feel.

This album is my favorite Springsteen album because it is that rare album that hits you harder with just a guitar, harmonica, and lyrics, than any fully produced, full band album ever could.

Touted almost as a commercial suicide at the time of its release, and still occupying a perverse spot in Springsteen's catalog, coming between his commercial breakthrough, The River, and his most popular album, Born In The U.S.A., Nebraska is a dark, bleak, emotionally-draining masterpiece. Springsteen's camp was known for keeping its production internalized, but Bruce truly took that to the extreme here, releasing an album, literally, of home demos - straight off a 4-track cassette recorder, featuring just his voice, guitar, and harmonica. The stories told within the songs are just as bleak and hopeless and the music: Springsteen, who has truly mastered the art of the story song, here began to branch out his lyrics by including truly emphatic sympathetic portraits of small-time criminals, desperate lowlifes, and the ordinary problems faced by ordinary people. This is truly Americana turned inside out - the dark side of the American dream that we often fail to mention or simply choose to forget about. Though the songs lack studio polish - indeed, one feels just as if Bruce were singing to you right off of his back porch - The Boss's vocals perfectly fit the songs: sung well, they complement the bleak lyrics with the Southern-inflected Jersey twang that is distinctly his. Nobody else could have made this album; indeed, Bob Dylan himself praised Springsteen's writing on this album, saying that he himself could never write a song like the title track. High praise, indeed. While the lyrics lack Dylan's poetic sensibility, they reflect and cast back off the true spirit of the real Everyman - who Springsteen is, no doubt, to many of us. Very, very few artists could succeed in this medium - and how many would even dare attempt it just after cracking the commercial market? With this album, Bruce Springsteen established his place as a true artist, in the process creating a masterpiece.