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After THE RISING and the associated post-September 11, 2001 patriotic upheavals – although he never confirmed that the inspiration was such – the Boss returns to reflect softly.
Subtle joy and latent melancholy mix in DEVILS & DUST, the latest work of the boy from Asbury Park. An album that, considering how carefully planned the arrangement of the tracks in the order they appear, doesn’t seem to be guided by a uniform thread, not even musically: joyous tracks (ALL THE WAY HOME) alternate, but the spleen often lingers around the corner of the lyrics, poignant in the expression of the simple everyday life stories they’re inspired by, and piercing bucolic ballads (SILVER PALOMINO, JESUS WAS AN ONLY SON, the splendid THE HITTER), where Springsteen lets his heart speak, with the counterpoint of the guitar and some sporadic breath emerging from nowhere, only to return there after a few notes, as happens, for example, in LEAH.
It can't necessarily be NEBRASKA, which remains the undisputed gem of the Boss's acoustic vein, but neither is it THE GHOST OF TOM JOAD, conceived modest in its ambitions, but born pretentious in its final outcome. To define DEVILS & DUST as a midpoint between the two would be unfair to NEBRASKA, but it's certainly much closer to it than to THE GHOST.
And this is the best appreciation we can offer to the good old dear Boss.
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