Ken Rosen

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http://www.metacritic.com/music/artists/springsteenbruce/devilsanddust

They say sooner or later your heroes are bound to disappoint you... well here's to postponing the inevitable!

Devils and Dust is a magnificent compilation of the heart-taking, heart-breaking, and heart-shaking, in turn more eloquent and more raw than anything I've come to expect from Springsteen (and I expect a lot).

Case in point: "Reno," of which much has been made due to its graphic imagery, but listen carefully to the dream-like second verse, and when the final, unexpected line of the song fades away, the real meaning of the song hits home and hits hard. The song immediately and forever after transforms from prurient to poignantly devotional. I didn't realize it until I typed this paragraph, but it's become my favorite song on the album, even if it's one I can't quite bring myself to sing along with.

My other favorite is "Maria's Bed," also about a prostitute (not sure what that says about me), but this one is as joyously unencumbered as "Reno" is weighted. Off all the songs on the album, "Maria's Bed" screams out for E Street backing. Soozie Tyrell's violin keeps the song airborne, as she does for "Leah," another brief, soaring love song that employs one of Springsteen's favorite tactics: ending the song seemingly prematurely, in order to drive home the point that what happens to his characters is sometimes less important than how we feel at the moment where we're most invested in the characters, and in the outcomes we desire for them.

Some of the songs show their lineage: although presented here in a very different arrangement, "All the Way Home" sounds very much like it was penned for Lucky Town (Bruce debuted it on the HT/LT tour in 1992 but never recorded it); "The Hitter" was written and performed (once) on the Ghost of Tom Joad tour, although it sounds llike it would be even more at home on Nebraska. "Silver Palamino," "Black Cowboys," and "Matamoras Banks" (the last of which despite its imagery loses points for cribbing from his own "My Beautiful Reward") all sound like Tracks candidates from the Tom Joad album.

Others sound completely fresh: "Jesus Was an Only Son" takes Springsteen's penchant for using religious imagery to tell secular stories and goes full-bore, with a straightforward piano melody that lulls the casual listener from determining what the song is truly about. "All I'm Thinkin' About" is so catchy that I've had to catch myself from breaking out into a spontaneous falsetto during business meetings.

"Long Time Comin'" was also written a decade ago during the Joad tour, but it works even better today, late in Springsteen's career: the narrator takes stock of his life, accepts his mistakes, and takes satisfaction in the moment and in the promise of the future. Is it a coincidence that he sings to Rosie in this song, or could these really be the same characters he first visited thirty years ago? Probably the former (maybe he realized he's overused Mary, even in its Maria variation), but it's nice to think it may be the latter.

If there's anything to quibble with, it's the DVD side of this dual-disc: although it's great to have a 5.1 surround mix, the acoustic performance videos are shot in amateur fashion in a dark, austere setting and are uninteresting to watch even the first time through. The DVD also isn't recognized by my PC's DVD player, although it works fine in my home theater. (Curiously, the jewel case warns that the audio side may not work in all players, but says nothing about the DVD side).

Devils and Dust is a fine piece of work, one that moves Springsteen forward in ways that The Rising didn't. Bruce kicked off his first solo acoustic tour in a decade this week, and I'll be catching it first-hand in Oakland next week. (Don't write in and tell me anything about the setlists so far... I don't want to know in advance!)

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