Bottle Of Whiskey, The Boss And A Map Of The U.S.

As a new contributor I was asked to pick and review my ultimate album. My mind immediately went to The Beatles and Bob Dylan. Where’s the fun in that though? Both artists and their catalogues have been dissected to no end. Not to mention, I've heard them ad nauseam for the last 15 years. So I started to think about albums I've discovered within the last few years that have had a profound effect on me. I kept coming back to one album. Nebraska by Bruce Springsteen.

I shrugged and wrote off The Boss for years, pegging him as some kind of American loving patriot wiener thanks to the song "Born In the USA” that seemed to be everywhere when I was a kid (how young and dumb I was and apparently unable to understand sarcasm). This mentality kept up for much longer than I'd like to admit until one day I was listening to a band (who shall remain nameless) that incorporated Springsteen lyrics into a live performance of one of their own songs. I was so taken by the lyrics that I asked around and found it was the first few verses from "Thunder Road". That was the tipping point because after that I knew that if I could have been wrong about him I might be missing out on something good and I'd at least have to investigate. Now to this day, while I love Springsteen, his work is still extremely hit or miss.  Even on what’s considered some of his best albums, I'll love half the songs but can't stomach the other half. It’s crazy, I know. However, in my eyes his best record start to finish is 1982’s Nebraska.

One of the reasons I find it so interesting, is the legend around it. Springsteen dropped Nebraska on an unexpecting fanbase. Springsteen demoed songs that would make up this album at his home on a 4 track with mostly acoustic guitar, some harmonica and the occasional slight backing vocal. He had always been a storyteller in his songs, but these were different. These were songs about the dregs of society, people so desperate that murder and theft were the only options left. When he showed the E-Street band the demos, they couldn't get the sound the songs needed. Ultimately, it was decided to commercially release the demos AS the album. This was a radical idea for the time but it captures something special. There’s an uninhibitedness in the performance with warts and all that he believed only a few people would ever hear, not the record buying populace. Lines from one song will end up in another over the course of the album, further proving its “rough draft” state but also connecting the album through cohesiveness.

The album starts with title track about the Charlie Starkweather murder spree from the 1950’s sung from the killer’s point of view. Right from the lonesome harmonica blast that opens the song you can practically see the waves of heat cascading off a car that’s driving through suburbia. Springsteen delivers the lines of the killer with deadpan and no remorse “They declared me unfit to live/said into the great void my soul’d be hurled/they wanted to know why I did what I did/well sir, I guess there’s just a meanness in this world”.

“Atlantic City” is the closest thing to a radio friendly song on this album and it’s far from it. A story of a man caught up against the odds in a life of crime but trying to go straight. “I got a job and tried to put my money away, but I got debts that no honest man can pay” It’s the outline to a low rent gangster flick or film noir. Another track, “Johnny 99” describes a man at wits end after he loses his job and the bank is ready to foreclose on his house. He gets drunk and out of desperation shoots and kills a night clerk. The judge gives him 99 years but he pleads for death instead. It’s slightly uptempo shuffle almost betrays its dire message. “State Trooper” does not have that problem. It’s one of the creepiest songs I’ve ever heard. Sung in a hypnotic whisper, it’s the sound of driving in pitch black at 3AM. A plea to a State Trooper to not pull the narrator over, “Maybe you got a kid, maybe you got a pretty wife/The only thing that I’ve got’s been botherin’ me my whole life”. The end of this song contains one of the spookiest yells I’ve ever heard. It affects me every time.

Both “Mansion On The Hill” and “Used Cars” look at the other side of the album, away from the bleakness and despair and highlight Bruce’s timeless storytelling. “Mansion” discusses a house that literally looks over the town. “At night my daddy’d take me and we’d ride/through the streets of a town so silent and still/park on a back road along the highway side/look up at the mansion on the hill”. In “Used Cars” it’s a simple song from a child’s point of view of him desperately wanting his family buying a new car when all they can afford is a used one. I know that doesn’t sound like much, but it’s elegant and simple and on an album with such intense lyrics a palate cleanser is needed occasionally.

 The centerpiece of the album is the song “Highway Patrolman” a remarkable and in depth character study and a meditation on what it means to be family. Our narrator, Joe Roberts works on the local small town police force in Michigan. He’s married, settled down and lives a good honest life. The problem is Joe has a brother, Frankie “and Frankie ain't no good”. The song takes us on a journey through the past as we learn about the brothers and what it means to be part of a family. “I catch him when he’s straying’ like any brother would/man turns his back on his family, well he just ain’t no good”. Joe’s dedication is tested when he gets a call to go check out a dispute at the bar. When he arrives he finds a man in a bloody mess and he knows Frankie was the cause of it. He jumps in his car and pursues him through the back country roads. After he sees Frankie’s headed towards the Canadian border, he pulls to the side of the road and turns his car off to watch Frankie disappear. The chorus picks up again and we are left to ruminate over their relationship. A simple tale of morality becomes more philosophically complex with each listen. It sounds like a modern update of the songs from Bob Dylan’s John Wesley Harding album.

I find the writing on this album to be remarkable, it’s taught and it’s lean. It follows the principle Hemingway bestowed upon himself to write the truest sentence he could once a day. Well old Brucey’s got an album full of them. Each song is its own short story or vignette. The older I get, the more I can empathize with certain characters and see different interpretations in the lyrics. It’s like it’s constantly evolving with me. The vocal quality is so gentle and spooky at times, there are songs that literally give me goose bumps on this record. It’s so intimate that I find myself always wanting to go back to it like the good novel that it is. Art should make you feel something and that’s what I chose Nebraska as my ultimate album. I always get a reaction from it every time I hear it. The music is timeless too, so 30 years from now when trends change it will never sound dated. It’s here for eternity.