Bruce Springsteen
The River

THE REVIEW

First of all, let me say one thing: the Boss is my favorite artist alongside the Velvet Underground, and so as a big Bruce fan, I cannot help but appreciate his absolute masterpiece, "The River".

The first thing to remember when talking about this album is, of course, the fact that it's a double album. Now, I don't know if you agree with me when I say that from a double album, one always expects a little bit more, and sometimes you're disappointed because as the number of songs grows, sometimes the "fillers" grow too. This is certainly not the case with the album in question, from which the Boss had to eliminate about ten songs, which would later find a place in "Tracks" (1998), a collection of "leftovers" on 4 CDs.

But now let's talk about "The River": the CD starts off in the best possible way, the "E-Street Band" plays perfectly , and this is probably Bruce's album that is closest to his live performances. In the first CD, there's more room for songs made expressly to be played live, "Out in the Street", "Two Hearts", and the always too underrated "Jackson Cage". The masterpiece of the first CD (and after "Thunder Road" of Springsteen's entire career) is, however, the title track where the Boss gives his best both musically and in terms of writing, crafting one of his beautiful stories.

On the second CD, ballads definitely have more space, starting right away with "Point Blank" and continuing with the splendid final "trilogy" ("The Price You Pay", "Drive All Night", "Wreck On The Highway"), all complemented by rock 'n' roll songs in the most classic sense of the term, though, to be honest, they turn out to be the least successful ("I'm a Rocker", "Cadillac Ranch").

In conclusion, what can I say? That the Boss, 5 years after his first masterpiece "Born To Run" and two years after the equally beautiful albeit slightly inferior "Darkness on the Edge of Town", has created his definitive masterpiece and one of the most beautiful CDs in rock history.