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Thursday, Nov 26, 2009
Most of the time, though, Springsteen and O'Brien get it right: "The Rising" is emotionally open and haunted by recurring images of fire and dust, faith and strength, the sky and the void, love and loss. It has the soul of a country-gospel record; the lyrics bear witness to pain and trials, but the music -- buoyed by cello, mandolin, dobro, slide guitar, church organ and, especially, Soozie Tyrell's violin -- uplifts.
On the opening track, "Lonesome Day," for instance, Springsteen makes ominous allusions to vipers in the grass and a dark sun on the rise, but the song is a vivacious rocker with a soaring cello and violin hook; listening to Patti Scialfa and Tyrell swing through their gospel shouts of "It's all right, it's all right, it's all right" on the chorus, you almost believe it will be. Springsteen also makes an adventurous attempt at Middle Eastern folk music with "Worlds Apart," which gracefully blends Pakistani qawwali singers, buzzing guitars, Scialfa's sirenic ululations and a surprisingly light, almost ethereal, vocal from Springsteen.
Some of Springsteen's lyrics, like "Lonesome Day" and even the aching "You're Missing," are vague enough to address loss and tragedy in general. Others are wrenchingly specific to the Sept. 11 attacks (although Springsteen never refers to the World Trade Center, New York City, terrorism or Sept. 11). On the steel-guitar driven blues "Into the Fire," Springsteen sings in the persona of a firefighter's widow: "I need your kiss, but love and duty called you someplace higher/ Somewhere up the stairs, into the fire." And on the cathartic title track, the narrator is a dead firefighter or rescue worker whose soul transcends the carnage to receive a heavenly reward -- a "dream of life" that comes to him "like a catfish dancin' on the end of my line." In both songs, the heroes are nameless, which prevents "The Rising" from duplicating the creepy eyewitness literalism of Neil Young's Flight 93 tribute, "Let's Roll."
Springsteen doesn't shy away from the messier emotions and impulses called up by Sept. 11. On "Empty Sky" (a title that could refer to the broken Manhattan skyline or the planeless skies in the week after the attacks), the narrator mourns his loved one and sings, "I want a kiss from your lips/ I want an eye for an eye." On the lovely "Nothing Man," which recalls "My Hometown" in its hushed organ and rockabye lilt, a shell-shocked rescue worker can't fit back into everyday life. And on the ghostly blues "Paradise," a man considers suicide in order to be reunited with his dead wife, a terror victim.
But on "Paradise," the grieving spouse experiences a vision of paradise as a lie, a void, and he chooses to live. That urge, that dream of life, drives the album's best songs, "The Rising," "Mary's Place" and the closing track, the stirring gospel hymn "My City of Ruins." "The Rising" and "My City of Ruins" (which was actually written before Sept. 11, about the decay of Asbury Park, N.J.) are built around similar images of resurrection, ascension and hands clasped in unity. And those images -- "Rise up, come on, rise up," commands the choir on "My City of Ruins" -- are a powerful contrast to the vision of the twin towers falling down, a refusal to let hate, chaos and death prevail.
The song that has so far stirred up the most disagreement among critics is "Mary's Place," which has been dismissed as a nostalgic throwback to E Street barn-burners like "Rosalita." For me, it's the heart of the record. On "Mary's Place," a woman mourns her partner, who died in the attacks ("From that black hole on the horizon/ I hear your voice calling me"); she tries to will his spirit back to her through the music they used to listen to together. "Seven days, seven candles in my window/ lighting your way/ Your favorite record's on the turntable/ I drop the needle and pray," Springsteen sings.
Yes, "Mary's Place" is an old-fashioned, honking E Street party that brings back memories of "The Wild, the Innocent and the E Street Shuffle." But that's the point -- this is a song about a couple whose relationship goes so far back, their favorite album is on vinyl. Ordering the band to "turn it up," Springsteen sends his narrator -- and us, too -- back to a place of comfort and innocence, where the music liberates and heals and the Big Man blows all night.
Of course, Springsteen isn't suggesting that rock 'n' roll can put everything back the way it was. There's an undercurrent of irretrievable loss on "Mary's Place" -- the woman takes to the dance floor with her arms around a memory -- that cleanses the song of nostalgia. And in the song immediately following "Mary's Place," "You're Missing," the narrator recites a litany of all that's not right, while a sighing cello and a trudging rhythm measure out the hard work of surviving: "Coffee cups on the counter, jackets on the chair/ Papers on the doorstep, but you're not there/ Everything is everything/ But you're missing."
Those small details of emptiness sound lived-in, and maybe they are: The Time article revealed that Springsteen telephoned the survivors of some of those Boss-fanatic victims he read about in "Portraits of Grief." One firefighter's widow told Time, "After I got off the phone with him, the world just felt a little smaller. I got through Joe's memorial and a good month and a half on that phone call." You can regard Springsteen's (unpublicized, until Time uncovered it) gesture as opportunistic if you want to. But I think those phone calls, and the way "The Rising" tends to our needs of the moment -- putting us in the company of old friends, giving voice to our sorrow and gratefulness -- feel just about right. This is Springsteen being a good neighbor in the community of rock 'n' roll. We reached out, and he was there.
