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Text File | 1992-08-28 | 4KB | 79 lines

                                                                                MUSIC, Page 64

Reborn, and Running Again


After more than four years, Bruce Springsteen releases a pair of
spellbinding albums, mostly about love

By JAY COCKS


    These are two wonderful records about the light at the
end of the tunnel of love. Forget all you have heard and read
since Bruce Springsteen's two advance singles were released
three weeks ago -- unless, of course, you listened to the songs,
in which case you could ignore all the Charley Inside show-biz
reporting about how radio stations were a little skeptical and
record stores a little uncertain, and was Bruce, at 42, a
family man with two kids, a little too settled and a little too
wealthy and a little too out of touch to burn the house down?

    Well, the house is on fire. The singles sang for
themselves: the plaintiveness of Human Touch; the explosive
emotional release of Better Days, one of the best tunes
Springsteen has ever written. The albums -- Human Touch and
Lucky Town -- are a twin testament to the power of redemptive
love, to the resilience of Springsteen's gifts and to the
restless spirit.

    His last album, Tunnel of Love, was released 4 1/2 years
ago. The final record made with the E Street Band, it was like
an unstanched wound. The songs were usually interpreted as a
reflection of his considerable personal turmoil. Human Touch and
Lucky Town, as the titles suggest, are about putting smashed
pieces together, about measuring loss and transcending it.
Whatever he staked on these records, he's got it back on one
Roll of the Dice.

    That tune comes midpoint on Human Touch and catches
Springsteen in full cry as a "thief in the house of love," doing
one of those 40-megaton rave-ups that can bring stadium crowds
to their feet. Human Touch was the first of the two albums to
be completed, and, with the backing of some heavy-duty Los
Angeles session players and such soulful voices as Bobby King
and Sam Moore, it has a real diamond-cut luster and precision.
It also has plenty of nerve. Two tunes, Man's Job and Real Man,
trash all the stereotypes of rock lyrics ("Now if you're lookin'
for a hero, someone to save the day,/ Well, darlin', my feet
they're made of clay") and present love -- looking for it,
nurturing it, keeping it -- as the real man's job.

    While Springsteen was trying to decide whether his Human
Touch album was actually finished, he returned to the studio and
emerged, only about eight weeks later, with the 10 songs on
Lucky Town. The sound is somewhat sparer here, the lyrics
rougher around the edges and maybe even better for that. Better
Days, which kicks the record off, has already attracted some
comment for the lines, "Now a life of leisure and a pirate's
treasure don't make much for tragedy." It's as if Springsteen
were taking a long, hard look at himself, but the key lines are
the ones that follow: "But it's a sad man, my friend, who's
livin' in his own skin and can't stand the company."

    A measure of sadness suffuses these records. But there is
also an urgent hope, a rush of spirit, a Leap of Faith, in
which Springsteen combines sexual and sacramental imagery in a
great erotic epiphany. And there is a new kind of sorcery too.
Springsteen ends Lucky Town with the eerie spirituality of My
Beautiful Reward, which is a unique combination of a Van
Morrison religious song and a Native American peyote dream. It's
a step into the mystic, a new direction. Springsteen's reborn
and running again.