Shining in the darkness

Press, 28 October 1982, Page 14

Shining in the darkness

BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN "Nebraska” (CBS SBP 23838). There are three record reviewing vogue words that get dulled with over-use, blit they easily fit Springsteen’s first solo album: Brilliant, essential, and relevant.

This cycle of songs about the darkness —. and the hope — at the heart of the American dream is remarkable. It crosses the line between folk and rock so easily that the sometimes-uneasy blend of styles seems a natural. No dud tracks on , this

album either. All those easy put-downs of Springsteen as a 1950 s rocker chained to themes of girls, cars and Spanish Johnnies on the boardwalk become drivel.

Springsteen sat in his New Jersey house to record this album, Robert Johnson-style. Instead of playing into a microphone with a cord leading to another room, he plays into a four-track cassette. His harmonica and guitar, out on their own with some inventive yips and yowls of his voice, have never been better.

Anyone put off by the many-layered and muddy sound of some of his earlier stuff will be delighted by the clarity and simplicity of this material.

The songs themselves are tough, a heady cross of the sentimental and cruel.

Two tracks, “Nebraska” and “Johnny 99,” are Springsteen’s version of Gary Gilmore in Norman Mailer’s “The Executioner’s Song,” as they outline the journeys of a mass murderer and an out-of-work auto industry worker who steals to stay alive. Springsteen has been in the heartland and the Far West before, in the promised land where it is hard to avoid being caught up in dreams where it all goes wrong. You can almost hear the wind across the prairie, in these songs. These are the wide open spaces that offer more confinement than freedom, the confinement of small towns that blot the deserts with their dirt roads, gas stations,' motels and burger bars. Back East, there is the confinement of industrial suburbs and grindingly-dull factory jobs, and the need to get out and roar all night in' your car to get away.

This album is not unrelenting darkness, though. There is a boppy drive along the turnpike — Beach Boys with a New Jersey rumble — as our hero heads towards his Wanda, the girl who worked out on Highway 60 at the Bob’s Big Boy fried chicken. They had wiped their fingers on a Texaco roadmap as they drove along — it was that romantic.

There is the highway patrolman ; whose brother, back from the war zone, has broken faith with his family. There is the man poking a dead dog with a stick on the side of the highway, the boy being baptised, the bridegroom waiting beside the river at sunset.

In all this muddle of moral values, there is still a light shining somewhere, even if it is the light from a house where he can no longer find his father. That light may shine’“across this dark highway where our sins lie unatoned,” but “at the end of

every hard-earned day, people find some reason to believe.”

If you give this album the attention it deserves, you will too. ,

-STAN DARLING MIDGE MARSDEN BAND “12 Bars from Mars” (Peak 1). A holiday intervened before this record could be reviewed, but in spite of that this album by the New Zealand band still deserves some space. No-one can accuse the Midge Marsden Band of lacking ambition in trying to establish a musical niche in New Zealand. The band are better known as a blues band, but “12 Bars from mars” is not a blues album.

The album opens on “Carry My Blues Away” not exactly a blues number, although it does contain a blues harp. The only genuine rhythm and blues track is the aggressive “I Wanna Be with You.”

Three tracks by Liam Ryan (keyboards) stand out. “Let Go Maggie (Let Go),” seems to be a reprise for Rod- Stewart’s “Maggie May,” especially from the piano chords. “One Wheel in the Sand” is an ambitious ballad, and “Someone Else’s Car,” has an unusual drumming style and a chorus which recalls Little Feat. “Don’t Stand in CornersAsk That Mountain” shows off Liam Ryan’s keyboards and guest musican, Ta Rutherford’s guitar, to good effect. Perhaps the best track is “Blue Murder,” a semi-acoustic track recalling Ry Cooder, with guest Dennis Mason prominent on saxophone, its haunting sound underpinning the track.

“12 Bars from Mars” shows off the band better than the debut album did last year, but I feel that the sound is still not fully developed — but this may be a technical problem. Although the standard of musicianship is high, especially on the final track, one senses a lack of direction. But thp musical experience is there. These Mars bars are worth a bite.

- NEVIN TOPP