Posted on Wed, May. 18, 2005
Springsteen rewards the faithful
By Dan DeLuca
Philadelphia Inquirer Music Critic
Bruce Springsteen was standing onstage in a flannel shirt at the sold-out Tower Theater, chuckling to himself as he told a shaggy dog story about the late Roy Orbison, when he revealed the key to the universe.
“You gotta have faith,” he blurted out. “And that’s what this next song is about.” The tune in question was “With Leah,” one of the upbeat numbers on Devils & Dust, the stripped-down new album at the core of Tuesday’s stunning solo show in Upper Darby.
But that succinct summation of Springteen-ian philosophy could have applied just as well to almost any song in his catalog, which was selectively sampled in 2 1/4 hours that began and ended with the Boss seated at the pump organ, first on “My Beautiful Reward,” and lastly on a transfixing cover of “Dream Baby Dream” by the 1980s synth-pop pioneers Suicide.
Devils & Dust is full of songs about characters who go looking for something to believe in -- and often as not, come up empty handed. And without it, they’re in trouble. At the Tower, armed with a harmonica rack and an acoustic guitar, the 55-year-old Jersey guy quickened the pace of the title cut, singing in the voice of an American soldier in Iraq hoping to find “the love that God wills/And the faith that He commands.” But instead, his “God filled soul” winds up poisoned by death and destruction.
Springsteen introduced “Reno,“ the song whose graphic imagery got D & D banned from Starbucks, by joking that the album would be available “at Dunkin’ Donuts and Krispy Kreme stores everywhere.” It depicts a man whose only glimpse of grace comes from dreamy remembrances during a visit to a prostitute. Like many D & D songs, it was more convincing onstage than on CD.
And the faith-seekers weren’t limited only to the new album, which was performed almost in its entirety. There was the “sister who prays for lost souls, then breaks down in the chapel after everyone‘s gone“ in “Incident on 57th Street,” the 1973 romance that Springsteen gorgeously rendered on piano. And “Reason to Believe,” from 1982’s Nebraska, which was recast as a stylized foot-stomping field holler with distorted vocals, but would have worked better if you could actually hear what Springsteen was singing.
The Philadelphia market embraced Springsteen early, and he has a tradition of rewarding longtime fans here with rarely played obscurities. The shocker was “Iceman,“ a sturdy ballad and Darkness On the Edge of Town outtake that had never been performed live. It too fit the evening’s theme of a quest for belief in something bigger than oneself, proclaiming “the search” to be “better than the shadows of your Daddy’s church.“
Springsteen clearly has weighty matters on his mind. In the intro to “Jesus Was An Only Son,’ he talked about how “our choices in life gain value by what we sacrifice.” And before “Matamoros Banks” he scolded President Bush, who he opposed in campaigning for John Kerry on the Vote for Change tour last fall, for not having “a humane immigration policy.”
But he was also loose, talkative, and, at times, goofy. He joked about his Catholic education and persistent religious imagery _ “all that brainwashing worked” - and said that when he now returns to the convent “where he was tortured as a child” they give him free beer.
And he mugged his way through the reverb-heavy, reggae-flavored “Part Man, Part Monkey,” another resurrected rarity that’s a pointed take on the evolution vs. creationist debate. (In introducing the song, which was a regular on the Tunnel of Love tour in the 1980s, he said that “the President was elected on the monkey vote” and ended the song with a quip: “We’ve come a long way, baby. And we’re goin’ back!“)
There were times when the E Street Band were missed - on “The Rising” and a needless “Land of Hope and Dreams,” in particular. And Springsteen’s voice and guitar were augmented by prerecorded strings and synthesizers on a handful of songs, which wound up constricting more than freeing him.
He needn‘t have bothered. This tour isn’t about communal uplift: it’s about struggling to find a safe place to keep darkness and doubt at bay, and Springsteen making an intimate connection with his audience.
To that end, he used a variety of moves to keep things fresh. He played electric piano on a sobering “Wreck On the Highway,” 12-string guitar on “Further On (Up the Road)” and frequently employed a haunting, wordless falsetto, most effectively on the boxing drama “The Hitter.”
And of the several songs presented in reworked versions, none was more arresting than the penultimate encore, “The Promised Land.” Usually, it’s a fist pounder, a shout-out to the heavens that “I ain’t a boy, no I’m a man!” On Tuesday, it was all quiet tension, with Springsteen tapping the guitar strings, trying to summon the strength to believe. But knowing that he has to find the faith, somehow.
Contact music critic Dan DeLuca at 215-854-5628 or ddeluca@phillynews.com.
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