Bruce Springsteen – The Ghost Of Tom Joad (Vinyl)
With several of its songs drawn directly from news stories, The Ghost of Tom Joad is more explicitly political than Nebraska (more so than anything in Springsteen's catalog, for that matter), and while the arrangements are more full-bodied than those on Nebraska (five cuts feature a full band), the production and the overall tone is, if anything, even starker and more low-key, with the lyrics all the more powerful for their spare backdrops.
While there's an undertow of bitterness in this album's tales of an America that has turned its back on the working class and the foreign-born, there's also a tremendous compassion in songs like "The Line," "Sinaloa Cowboys," "Balboa Park," and the title cut, which lend their subjects a dignity fate failed to give them.
Individually, these songs, either angry or plaintive, are clean and expertly drawn tales of life along this nation's margins, and their cumulative effect is nothing short of heartbreaking; anyone who pegged Springsteen as a zealously patriotic conservative in the wake of the widely misunderstood Born in the U.S.A. needs to hear this disc.
Vinyl, LP, Album, Reissue, Remastered
Tracklist:
The Ghost Of Tom Joad 4:23
Straight Time 3:25
Highway 29 3:39
Youngstown 3:52
Sinaloa Cowboys 3:51
The Line 5:14
Balboa Park 3:19
Dry Lightning 3:30
The New Timer 5:45
Across The Border 5:24
Galveston Bay 5:04
My Best Was Never Good Enough 2:00
With several of its songs drawn directly from news stories, The Ghost of Tom Joad is more explicitly political than Nebraska (more so than anything in Springsteen's catalog, for that matter), and while the arrangements are more full-bodied than those on Nebraska (five cuts feature a full band), the production and the overall tone is, if anything, even starker and more low-key, with the lyrics all the more powerful for their spare backdrops.
While there's an undertow of bitterness in this album's tales of an America that has turned its back on the working class and the foreign-born, there's also a tremendous compassion in songs like "The Line," "Sinaloa Cowboys," "Balboa Park," and the title cut, which lend their subjects a dignity fate failed to give them.
Individually, these songs, either angry or plaintive, are clean and expertly drawn tales of life along this nation's margins, and their cumulative effect is nothing short of heartbreaking; anyone who pegged Springsteen as a zealously patriotic conservative in the wake of the widely misunderstood Born in the U.S.A. needs to hear this disc.
Vinyl, LP, Album, Reissue, Remastered
Tracklist:
The Ghost Of Tom Joad 4:23
Straight Time 3:25
Highway 29 3:39
Youngstown 3:52
Sinaloa Cowboys 3:51
The Line 5:14
Balboa Park 3:19
Dry Lightning 3:30
The New Timer 5:45
Across The Border 5:24
Galveston Bay 5:04
My Best Was Never Good Enough 2:00
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