Intelligent and heartfelt

Singers do improve with age. So, we should never accept reasons like matanda na or pagod na when artists of a certain age fail to hit their notes or are less than effective in their performances. They are just being careless or lazy. And that statement also goes for rock singers whose vocal cords suffer more wear and tear than those of classical vocalists’. Listen to how wonderful Rod Stewart sounds in his Great American Songbook series of albums.

Well, I just found another proof of this from an unlikely source. Would you believe Bruce Springsteen? The man fondly referred to as The Boss does his best and most affecting singing ever in his latest album, Devils & Dust. And he is all of 55 years old.

The 12-song album is his first since the double Platinum selling The Rising three years ago. It is made up of all new compositions done without the E Street Band, which usually plays in his recordings and performances. The Boss plays almost all of the musical instruments with only producer Brendan O’Brien on bass and Steve Jordan on the drums. The album is intelligent, heartfelt and more acoustic than any he has done these past two decades or so.

If I remember right, the last time he went "quiet" was in the homemade "Nebraska" in 1982. And as any musician will tell you, going acoustic also means opening up the singing and the music to minute scrutiny. You do not hear the mistakes or let’s say the lapses when there is a lot of sound going on in the music. But if you try paring things down to almost only the basics like Springsteen does here, then you need everything to be right. More so the singing, which in this case must be his most emotional.

Come to think of it, there is no other way to do the songs he has written for this album. Devils & Dust is made up of little stories that can wrench your guts out. Springsteen, like an actor takes on the lead roles in each and he even goes as far as changing his voice to suit each part. But whether he is singing joyously in falsetto along with a fiddle or reduced to gravelly sobs, he gives a great performance every time.

The title cut Devils & Dust is about two sides fighting what they both believe is a holy war but where everything ends in death. In The Hitter, a boxer gives off one man’s rationale for inflicting physical cruelty on others for the sake of entertainment. Jesus Was an Only Son has a mother comparing her situation with that of Jesus who was also an only son. Matamoros Bank has an illegal immigrant killed while trying to cross the Rio Grande pleading to be remembered.

He lightens up the mood somewhat in Reno, about a sexual encounter, Long Time Comin’, which is about a repentant father awaiting the birth of his child and in the sweet love song All I’m Thinkin’ About but not that much. What he makes very clear to the listener with every cut is that he felt the pain of the people around him, he thought hard about it and then wrote these songs from his heart.

Devils & Dust is one of Springsteen’s best but it is not The River or The Rising in initial market impact. I agree that the contents might be too much for some listeners at times. The themes play like movies that you do not want to see again because they are too real and too painful. But this is an album that listeners of coming generations should listen to and that will hopefully lead them to a better understanding of the human existence.

I think this is also what he wishes. As the father says in Long Time Comin’ If I had one wish in this God forsaken world, kids/ it’d be that your mistakes would be your own. How very well said for all of us.

Devils & Dust is now available on limited edition CD’s. Every copy of the CD comes with free DVD that features the entire album in Surround Sound & PCM Stereo and acoustic performance videos of the five singles from the album with extensive personal introductions from The Boss himself.