For his second LP — and second album of 1973 — Bruce
\nSpringsteen met the challenge of taking his music to the next
\nlevel. Already evident was the evolutionary process that would
\ncontinue through every album to come. Ever-restless and endlessly
\nambitious as an artist, Springsteen threw everything but the
\nkitchen sink into this album and came out with, at an absolute
\nminimum, an action-packed live show, an anthem for his followers to
\nsing along to, and a memorable name for his increasingly tight
\nbacking band.<\/p>\n
If on
\nGreetings From Asbury Park<\/i> Springsteen sounded like a folk
\nsinger with a band behind him, a la Bob Dylan 1965, on
\nThe Wild, The Innocent & The E Street Shuffle<\/i> he sounds
\nlike a supercharged rhythm and blues frontman with the charisma to
\nelectrify thousands at a time (the phrase “Van Morrison in
\nhyperdrive” comes to mind\u2026). The newly christened E Street
\nBand is fully integrated in this set of songs, and slams them home
\nwith giddy authority.<\/p>\n
The difference is evident right away as the band launches into
\nthe classic white soul of “The E Street Shuffle,” fueled by David
\nSancious’s dated but delicious clavinet (shades of Stevie Wonder)
\nand Clarence Clemons’ sassy sax work. The slow-building ballad that
\nfollows — “4th of July, Asbury Park (Sandy)” — is where you can
\nsee a bigger change, though. On
\nGreetings<\/i>, Springsteen’s characters were all young and wild
\nand living for the moment. “Sandy” looks beyond the horizon of
\ntonight into the future, recognizes the way life’s changes often
\npart young lovers, and brings that realization to bear in a sweet,
\nprematurely nostalgic song that’s part romantic plea and part
\nartful goodbye. You can almost hear the transition from teenager to
\nyoung man happen between verses.<\/p>\n
The rest of the album is more or less a joyride through a
\nmusical funhouse that blends r&b, roots-rock and white soul
\ninto a frothy, exuberant punch. “Kitty’s Back” starts out very Van
\nMorrison and accelerates into a full-on jam, a musical adventure
\nanchored in a solid r&b groove. “Wild Billy’s Circus Story” is
\none of Springsteen’s early experiments, a cut that opens up in
\nDixieland with accordion and tuba leading the way, and later on
\nfinds Springsteen playing mandolin and trying on the country-blues
\nsinging style he would use again on
\nNebraska<\/i> and
\nGhost Of Tom Joad<\/i>.<\/p>\n
The biggest advance, though, is that Springsteen has reined in
\nhis initial tendency to overwrite. These songs are full of
\nevocative images and details, but don’t feel nearly as crowded or
\novereager as the material on
\nGreetings<\/i>. It’s almost as though the more energy he invested
\nin the music, the tighter his lyrics became.<\/p>\n
Starting out side two of the original album structure, “Incident
\non 57th Street” feels like an early blueprint for the
\nBorn To Run<\/i> album that would follow 18 months later. Opening
\nwith solo piano, Bruce and the band do a steady build through
\nanother narrative of Spanish Johnny, Janey and the rest of the
\nstreet rats searching for love, a thrill, a purpose, a way out. “We
\nmay find it out on the street tonight baby \/ Or we may walk until
\nthe daylight maybe,” sings Bruce, and you can feel a chorus of
\n“tramps like us” hiding right around the corner as Sancious and
\nDanny Federici’s terrific piano and organ work lights the way. The
\nsong breaks down and then builds to a brilliant climax featuring a
\nguitar solo from Springsteen, a gospel chorus and a final breakdown
\nback to the piano coda\u2026<\/p>\n
\u2026that kicks right into one of the highlights of
\nSpringsteen’s four-decade run. “Rosalita (Come Out Tonight)” is a
\n7:05 rumbling, tumbling, tempo-shifting, tongue-twisting,
\nbreak-it-down-and-fire-it-up-again rock and roll thrill ride. It’s
\nimpossible to capture in mere words the sheer volume of energy and
\nexuberance this one unloads through your speakers. If you aren’t on
\nyour feet by the finish, I can’t help you, and neither can
\nBruce.<\/p>\n
If “Incident” feels like a blueprint for what was coming next,
\nthe closer “New York City Serenade” feels like the model home
\nitself. Springsteen takes chance after chance with this song,
\nthrowing in an extended piano intro, strings, melodramatic vocals,
\nsharp, unexpected tempo shifts and a stunningly expansive
\narrangement. The oversized soundscape and musical palette he uses
\nhere points inevitably toward the pinnacle he would reach on the
\nnext album with “Jungleland,” of almost operatic rock and roll,
\namped-up soul music with the sweep and ambition of a million-dollar
\nBroadway finale.<\/p>\n
\nThe Wild, The Innocent & The E Street Shuffle<\/i> is an
\nalbum that leaves you drained at the end, spent and smiling, much
\nlike the live shows that Springsteen and the E Streeters put on in
\nthe wake of its release. One of those shows would change the lives
\nof at least two men who participated: Springsteen himself, and his
\nfuture manager\/producer Jon Landau, the noted young music critic
\nwho, after catching a show at the Harvard Square Theater, famously
\nwrote “I saw rock and roll future and its name is Bruce
\nSpringsteen.”<\/p>\n
That’s the kind of ecstatic reaction this music inspired in
\nBruce’s early followers. For better or worse, that core audience
\nwas about to get much bigger. This wouldn’t be the album that broke
\nSpringsteen, but it surely primed the pump, and stands as one of
\nhis very best.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":27001,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"artist":[5832],"rating":[5646],"class_list":["post-38320","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-bruce-springsteen","rating-rating-a"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/38320","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/review"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=38320"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/38320\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/27001"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=38320"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=38320"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=38320"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}