Bruce Springsteen's new album, Magic, bears the wounds of the first decade of the twenty-first century and its endless war, and the world it portrays isn't pretty, isn't even sad, but empty, devastated, like something from the mind of Cormac MacCarthy. To the ear, it's familiar Springsteen. The cadences and riffs, anthems and ballads, hints of the blues and country and the border bear the trademark of his best pop sounds. Listen more closely, however, and this is a decidedly dark album, darker in its way than even the acoustic Spirit of Tom Joad.
The world Springsteen conjures here is a world in which “The favored march up over the hill/ In some fools parade/ Shoutin' victory for the righteous/ But there ain't much here but graves” (Gypsy Biker). A world where “We're just counting the miles, you and me,” with the kids asleep in the back seat. America on the road, but with a difference. There's a war on. "And we don't measure the blood/ we've drawn anymore/ We just stack the bodies outside the door” (Last to Die). A world that's become too familiar, in other words.
In the opening song, Springsteen is Radio Nowhere, “just searchin' for a world with some soul,” “boppin' through the wild blue/ Tryin' to make a connection with you.” Who's “you”? America, it seems, has gone silent, lost her soul. Is it America who'll “be comin' down now” in You'll Be Comin' Down? “Like a thief on a Sunday morning/ It all falls apart with no warning/ Your cinnamon sky's gone/ candy-apple green/ The crushed metal of your little flying machine.”
It is surely America that has abandoned him in “Livin' in the Future.” “My ship Liberty sailed away on/ a bloody red horizon/ The groundskeeper opened/ the gates and let the wild dogs run.” And he asks, “tell me is that rollin' thunder/ Or just the sinkin' sound of somethin' righteous goin' under?” But don't worry Darling, the chorus insists, “We're livin' in the future and none of this has happened yet.” Your own worst enemy, it seems, has come to town, “Everything is falling down.” But maybe that's because “Your flag it flew so high/ It drifted into the sky” (Your Own Worst Enemy).
The album pivots on two less desperate notes. Girls In Their Summer Clothes is the only light song on offer, a celebration of possibility, where the girls stand for nothing much more than themselves and the pleasures of early summer.
I'll Work For Your Love is deeply enigmatic, a love song to the Virgin? But it evokes the same dark themes of the first few songs and the even darker ones of the last pieces. The sun lifts a halo around the hair of his beloved, but at her lips is a crown of thorns. He watches her smooth her blouse as “seven drops of blood fall.” No wonder he sees the Book of Revelation in her blue eyes. “Now our city of peace has crumbled/ Our book of faith's been tossed/ And I'm just out here searchin'/ For my own piece of the cross.”
Last To Die and Devil's Arcade evoke the meaningless sacrifice of lives in the endless war of these years. “I thought of a voice from long ago/ Who'll be the last to die for a mistake.../ Whose blood will spill, whose heart will break?” And in Magic, Springsteen is the magician with the coin in his palm, the card up his sleeve, the rabbit in his hat, who can cut you in half “while you're smiling ear to ear.” But “the freedom that you sought's/ Driftin' like a ghost amongst the trees” and “There's bodies hangin' in the trees/ This is what will be, this is what will be.”
If there is hope here, it is dark or uncertain. Maybe the last to die will be those tyrants and kings “strung up at your city gates.” Maybe a lover, Springsteen hopes in the closing song, can bring comfort to the war wounded, “A house on a quiet street,/ a home for the brave/ ... a body that waits/ For the touch of your fingers/ The end of a day/ The beat of your heart.../The beat of your heart, the slow burning away/ Of the bitter fires of the devil's arcade.” Because not much else is left. In Long Walk Home, Springsteen returns to the familiar theme of his home town, where his father taught him that the flag over the courthouse “means certain things are set in stone/ Who we are, what we'll do/ and what we won't.” But the town is unrecognizable now, the diner shuttered and boarded up “with a sign that just said 'gone'.” It's gonna be a long walk home.
This might be the most political of Springsteen's albums, if we have ears to hear. There are those who wish he'd join the anti-war movement in a more forthright way, like Steve Earl – and fans who'd just as soon not hear his sentiments on the would-be kings and actual tyrants who occupy the White House.
Springsteen's not shy of overtly political songs, at least not the old ones, as the Seeger Sessions showed. Nor does he hesitate to speak up on stage. But his own work is more reflective, more subtle, and ultimately more telling than traditional political music. It is also less cathartic, driving us deep into the heart of the present darkness and our uncertain future. It's well we listened. The political season upon us now for some time may bring hope to some, but for most of us, as, it seems clear, for Springsteen, it's gonna be a long walk home.
Michael Foley
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