Nebraska

Location & Checkout Length	Call Number	Checkout Length	Item Status
Malletts Adult A/V 2-week checkout	CD Rock Springsteen Nebraska	2-week checkout	Due 04-23-2024

Compact disc.
Nebraska -- Atlantic City -- Mansion on the hill -- Johnny 99 -- Highway patrolman -- State trooper -- Used cars -- Open all night -- My father's house -- Reason to believe.
Songs; the composer, vocals and guitar, with instrumental accompaniment.

COMMUNITY REVIEWS

Awesome submitted by glennauerbach on June 26, 2011, 7:34am Bruce is awesome!

Sin Guilt and Consequence submitted by Caser on July 6, 2011, 2:56pm Nebraska (the album) distills down to a trio of essential elements: sin, guilt, and consequence. Most songs here are narratives about how we live with the "debts that no honest man can pay," a line that circles back through several songs.

There is an undercurrent of determinism in many of the stories where the central character seems bound to commit an act of sin, whether accidentally, like hitting a dog on the highway in "Reason to Believe," or because "there's just a meanness in this world" in the album opener, "Nebraska," or because of a hard fact, "Franky ain't no good" in "Highway Patrolman," or due to a confluence of circumstances, "The bank was holdin' my mortgage and they were gonna take my house away," as Johnny 99 pleads. Like so many of Springsteen's previous songs, the characters feel trapped in their condition and see only one course of action left available.

Bruce followers have heard from people desperate to escape, to drive away and leave their town and not "get caught on the wrong side of that line" before. "Hungry Heart", "Born to Run", "Thunder Road", maybe an entire side of singles from Bruce's last three records. But Nebraska is a departure from Springsteen's previous work because the songs are about criminals, rather than desperate though well-intentioned working class people. This gives the album an even darker tone than Darkness or River where the characters merely make intimations of committing crimes, and even then the crimes are drug deals or shady business deals. On Nebraska, the desperate become the killers.

Yet Springsteen fills these character sketches with such rich, believable voices and details their desperate circumstances so convincingly that it's hard not to pull for their redemption, even when their transgressions are unforgivable. He sets the standard high with "Nebraska," a song that slowly unfolds the true chronicle of Charles Starkweather, who, with his teenage girlfriend, went on a killing spree in '58 at the height of Eisenhower-era America. The killings were the basis for the brilliant 1973 film, Badlands, with Warren Beatty in the lead role.

Like Capote's attempt to know killer Perry Smith in such profound detail in order to be able to write about him for In Cold Blood, Springsteen sounds like he's spent a lot of time with his characters. What's powerful is his ability to allow the details of these characters and their situations to create an experience universal to listeners.

Ultimately, his characters are archetypes, embodiments in their song context of a question of the human condition. The "mythology" that critics praise him for creating is really bringing to flesh and song some of the deepest questions we face in life, such as 'what is honor'? 'what is belief'? In interviews, when Springsteen is in storyteller mode, he explains how a song asks these questions, but he doesn't answer them. He's smart enough to know that he doesn't have the answers, and humble enough not to try.

Soulful and Dark submitted by Meginator on July 24, 2023, 9:09pm Stripped down to vocals, guitar, and (occasional) harmonica, these songs are all stories about ending up somewhere unexpected and less than ideal. It's the kind of album that makes a small impact on the surface but opens up immediately into vast depths of meaning the second you start really paying attention and enegaging with it. It's not flashy, but it does channel some serious emotions with beautiful complexity and it is well worth the mental engagement it asks for.