BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN Born In The U.S.A.

(Columbia)

by Jeff Nesin

The first thing you notice, after Annie Leibovitz’s wonderful photographs, is the Steve Lillywhite-like echoed garbage cans drum sound. With a mixmaster (Bob Clearmountain) and a production committee of four (Springsteen, Jon Landau, Chuck Plotkin, Steve Van Zandt), it’s hard to say just how Max Weinberg’s tubs got to sounding the way they do, but it’s definitely a good thing, because a sense of pop currency is important, no, essential to the success of Born In The U.S.A.

Essential because the next thing you notice is how down, as in “down, down, down” the songs are. Not quite Nebraska s acoustic meditations on mass murder, but it is all “Dead End Street” with no “Waterloo Sunset.” The unrelieved dourness got me down, down, down too, so I raised the question with several orthodox Bruceites of my acquaintance, most of whom are women. While they did indeed know what I was talking about, they also seemed tuned in to the Boss on a level unknown to literal minded chumps like me, a level at which they could hear the very same songs as ultimately affirmative. Hmmm...