https://rollingstone.com.br/musica/nebraska-82-resolve-o-misterio-de-springsteen-sim-e-nao/

https://rollingstone.com.br/musica/nebraska-82-resolve-o-misterio-de-springsteen-sim-e-nao/

A mythical Electric Nebraska may not technically exist, but this five-disc box set is a fascinating exploration of Bruce’s haunting 1982 album

There are good albums and great albums, and then there are sacred albums—worlds that you enter as if in a dream and emerge with a transformed spirit and neurochemistry. The classic Nebraska (1982) by Bruce Springsteen is one of those. Conceived at the height of the Reagan years, when the singer was in a dark place and rethinking his purpose, it was a radical pause and restart, a lo-fi set of home recordings that sounded like nothing in his catalog, and a calm before the storm of Born in the USA. “I was after a feeling,” he wrote about Nebraska in his memoirs, “a tone that sounded like the world I had known and still carried within me.” The result was a hauntingly disturbing work of art that many people deeply cherish.

But people always want more, and given that A) Nebraska is primarily an album of enhanced demos, B) came from the same songwriting sessions that later produced Born in the USAand C) superfans and members of E Street Band have been fueling rumors about an LP for years ElectricNebraska shelved, it is surprising that it took so long for this mythical lost album to come to light. Clearly, we have to thank Jeremy Allen White and Deliver Me From Nowhere.

Anyway, here it is. Does it support the myth? Yes and no. Yes, in the sense that recordings were actually made in 1982 of some songs by Nebraska in more complete arrangements with the members of the E Street Band of bruce. And no — because, strictly speaking, there is no ElectricNebraska itself, despite the ambiguities of Springsteen about the subject (as reported in this magazine) and the fact that one disc in this five-disc box set is called ElectricNebraska.

However: as art history, theological inquiry, and secular deep dive into the rabbit hole of brucebase, Nebraska ’82 is rich material, and for serious fans of Springsteenessential listening. The first two albums are peppered with revelations. One disc contains remnants of the original four-channel tape demonstrations made by Springsteen in your home in Colts Neck, NJwith extras from a later acoustic studio session at The Power Station who tried, and failed, to surpass those recordings.

The cornerstone is the demonstration of “Born in the USA”which appeared on the epic leftovers compilation Tracks (1998). She opens this box and it resonates differently here, showing how much it was part of the vision of Nebraska and where was the narrative composition of Springsteen. It also shows how wrong it would have been for the final track listing of Nebraska — its anthemic refrain, yearning to be free, would have seemed out of place. The next iteration of the song, a raw guitar rock on the record ElectricNebraskashows its evolution. Both versions display the song’s sharp social critique and conflicted pride more effectively than the megahit final version. But musically, none of them are that engaging.

Likewise, at least in retrospect, you can hear the festive jam in a gently insinuating draft of “Pink Cadillac”the future hit of Natalie Cole and side B of Born in the USA It’s sensual and vaguely creepy, a strangely intimate voicemail. At other times, the addition of neighborhood church piano and bass cover the exquisite shiver of the title track from Nebraskawhile a tight groove and overheated vocals detract from the articulate desperation of “Atlantic City” (Levon Helm and The Band would achieve a more convincing band arrangement years later, just as Springsteen & Co.). Two wild punk-rockabilly versions of the fervent “Downbound Train” of Born in the USA speak of the admiration of Springsteen put The Clash.

But a couple of never-released songs in the leftovers are the highlights of the set. “Child Bride” is a disturbing sketch of what would become “Working on the Highway” of Born in the USAwhich turned the moral tangle of the narrative, presumably involving an underage girl, into a kind of sealess sea song that, like the album’s title track, drowns out its own narrative. (An early version of “Highway” here obscures the narrator’s transgression.) As America tries to regain its pride by erasing its unfavorable histories, the struggle of Springsteen to balance light and dark in these distinctly American recordings is tremendously moving. “Gun in Every Home” It’s another balancing act, a remarkable leftover that ended up being shelved. “I moved to the suburbs, yeah, just me and my family/ On the block where I live, you got everything a man would ever want/ Two cars in every garage and a gun in every house,” Springsteen sings without emotion. (“When I wrote it, I thought I was a little hysterical,” he admits in the liner notes. “Now, of course, it seems completely natural.”).

The third and fourth discs—audio and video, respectively—document a (mostly) solo acoustic performance of the full album by Nebraskarecorded last summer without an audience at the Count Basie Theater, Red Bank, NJ. The film, by Thom Zimnyit’s more or less what you’d expect: black and white, moody lighting, the performer walking in slow motion to the empty theater stage (trigger warning: may trigger Covid lockdown flashbacks), then sitting down to play the songs straight through. There is no attempt to hide the mise-en-scène, although the accompanying musicians are mostly invisible. Can you see a fleeting glimpse of Larry Campbell behind the scenes during “Atlantic City”playing mandolin in the shadows; in “Used Cars”, Charlie Giordano adds glockenspiel fireflies in silhouette.

In the liner notes, Springsteen he says he arrived at this late performance quite cold, and was impacted again by the songs, by how “their weight imposed itself on me”. It’s a powerful performance, although more than 40 years later, as a guy in his 70s, he delivers them as a storyteller outside the story — a bit like Springsteen presenting Springsteen on Broadway. On the original LP of Nebraskaremastered for the final disc of the box set, the performances seemed more like method interpretation by a possessed man, physically inhabited by the stories he told.

Springsteen I already said that Nebraska is his greatest work, and it’s interesting that when examining the original LP and the other archival recordings included here, he seems impressed by what his younger self was channeling at that time. He uses the word “shocked” more than once in the liner notes. He says, “I don’t know where I was coming from with those arrangements,” and “I don’t know what was influencing me at the time.” He concludes: “Most of this is quite mysterious to me.”

Indeed, mystery is at the heart of the magic of Nebraska — the mystery of what drives human beings toward darkness and self-destruction, the mystery of a rich country disrespecting its people, the mystery of an artist reinventing himself with a red-hot compositional hand, whispering in his own ear to make the mystery manifest. He did, and when you hear the Nebraska In the end, the first versions and re-recordings of the box set, even the good ones here, are blown like leaves in a punishing autumn wind. The falsetto howls at the end of “Atlantic City” they become spectral again, not vocal effects deployed variously across the sessions. Many of the songs from Nebraska would become American classics, and it says a lot that “Atlantic City” of Levon Helm is one of his greatest performances, the same goes for the version of Emmylou Harris of “My Father’s House”. It also says a lot that their versions remained close to those on the album Nebraska finished. Why bruce hit them straight.

Source: Rollingstone

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