Back in 2000, Bruce Springsteen debuted a new song called “American Skin (41 Shots)” at a concert in Atlanta. It was, he claimed, inspired by the death of Amadou Diallo, an unarmed West African immigrant who was shot 19 times when four New York City police officers mistook his wallet for a gun. The song was a deeply empathetic response to the tragedy, as a famous rock star tried to see the world from the point of view of both the police officers who work rough neighborhoods and the African American residents who find themselves in danger for even the most harmless actions. Even before many people had actually heard it, “American Skin” sparked controversy, as New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani and Police Chief Howard Safir publically condemned both the singer and the song. Particularly egregious was the reaction of Bob Lucente, the head of the State Fraternal Order of Police, who called Springsteen both a “dirtbag” and a “floating fag.”
For his part, Springsteen weathered the uproar stoically. He explained in interviews that the song wasn’t necessarily anti-cop, but he didn’t shy away from making it a permanent addition to his setlists during that tour. A studio version was released to radio stations, but the song wasn’t available commercially until the following year, when it appeared at the beginning of disc two of 2001’s Live in New York City. In the decade since, it has collected dust as a footnote in Springsteen’s late-career catalog—a reminder, when you needed one, that he could still write a powerful and topical song. In 2009, however, he revived “American Skin” and began dedicating performances to Trayvon Martin, and that sad new relevance is ostensibly the reason the song appears on Springsteen’s 18th album, High Hopes, a collection of new recordings of songs that he has been playing for 10 or 12 years. Essentially these are all outtakes from The Rising, Magic, and Working on a Dream*,* but Springsteen re-recorded them with producer Ron Aniello and sequenced them into a standalone album.
The Boss has a famously deep archive of quality songs from throughout his career, so there’s no reason to scoff at the concept behind High Hopes. Fans have been bootlegging these songs for years now, which means the album is aptly titled: There are high hopes for studio versions of almost all of these songs, especially “American Skin”. The new version, though, has stiff competition. The performance on Live in New York City gains its power from the concert setting, with the E Street Band alternating vocals to create a sense of community and Clarence Clemons’ sax solo sounding like a heartfelt eulogy. The studio version from 2001 duplicates that arrangement, only without Springsteen telling the crowd, “We need a little quiet.”
But, unfortunately, the High Hopes recording of “American Skin” highlights everything that’s gone wrong with Springsteen’s music in the 21st century. It’s garish and melodramatic, with a cluttered arrangement and slick production that distracts from its message. The song open with Springsteen singing "41 shots," but his vocals are distorted and distant--a cheap effect. There is some industrial percussion that would have sounded dated in 2000, and there is Tom Morello’s guitar solo, which could have been cribbed from some third-tier 80s power ballad. In 2013, the song is too aware of its own import, which means it strains for the same sense of gravity that once came easily. Live, Springsteen was able to play up the contradictions and colliding perspectives fueling the country’s race problems, even implicating himself in the process, but now his outrage has curdled into something like dulled resignation.
Springsteen has struggled in the 2000s to find the best musical vehicle for his thoughts on the state of America. Live, the E Street Band can be a powerhouse, as the sexagenarian continues to exude charisma and energy on stage. The studio, however, is another thing. Nebraska aside, Springsteen has never been a minimalist, but his recent output has been maximalist in all the wrong directions. Rather than the Spectorian wall of sound he perfected on Born to Run and The River, he now dabbles in studio gimmicks that sound both expensive and dated: vocal distortion, caked-on production, pots-and-pans percussion, inert drum loops, a puzzling fascination with Celtic flourishes. On High Hopes the thick arrangements distract from the good songwriting and conceal the bad, often to the extent that it’s impossible to discern which is which.
The result is an album that often sounds salvageable but continually trips over its own ambitions and good intentions. On “Heaven’s Wall” the gospel choir overwhelms the song completely, disrupting the careful cadence of the verses and any nuance the lyrics might carry; rather than righteous, it comes across as self-righteous. “Harry’s Place” is all setting and no story, with details borrowed from an Elmore Leonard novel. Most tragic may be the closing cover of Suicide’s “Dream Baby Dream”, which begins promisingly with Springsteen’s gravelly voice and an accordion mimicking the New York duo’s gutter drone. It’s a quietly powerful moment, but you just know he’s going to do something to ruin it. And sure enough the song builds to a manufactured climax full of corny drum loops and gloppy strings.
Springsteen is too much of a control freak to escape blame, but perhaps most culpable is Tom Morello, who is apparently a member of the E Street Band now. For the last few years Morello has grown seemingly embarrassed by his rap-rock history with Rage Against the Machine, when making his guitar sound like a turntable carried some cultural weight. He does share with Springsteen a few populist heroes, namely Woody Guthrie and John Steinbeck. Otherwise, they apparently have little in common beyond their politics, and Morello sounds awkwardly fitted to these songs. He shreds gracelessly through the cover of the Havalinas’ “High Hopes” and clutters “Heaven’s Wall” with squall and distortion. When his guitar isn’t disruptive, it’s simply superfluous. Often it’s just dumbfounding: his solos on “The Ghost of Tom Joad”—which gets a passable cock-rock makeover that owes a debt to Rage Against the Machine’s cover—sound like David Gilmour sitting in with Cinderella.
An unwelcome presence, Morello is simply the most obvious of many elements on High Hopes that just don’t work. It’s all the more unfortunate given that there are actually some redeemable songs here, along with some brief glimpses of Springsteen the rock'n'roll storyteller. Even as he eclipses 60, he’s one of the few rock veterans still concerned with actually rocking, which he does convincingly on “Just Like Fire Would” and “Frankie Fell in Love”—two negligible songs that you might dismiss on a better album. Here they sound actually feisty and even ribald, with a fire that is squelched on the more serious numbers. I can’t tell if those highs actually redeem the album somewhat or make it even more of a disappointment, but I do know that the out-in-the-streets details of “Frankie Fell in Love” are more humane and meaningful than the grandiose philosophizing of “Hunter of Invisible Game”. Instead of trying so hard to live up to the times, perhaps he just needs to work on capturing a moment.
