Bruce Springsteen, Nebraska (1982)
I’ve been about as uninterested in Bruce Springsteen as can be lately – not regretting the years I was a fan or anything like that but just so wound up about it. He’s really a gurning clown. This has been on my mind a bit over the last couple of years basically. And then the Broadway show really gave me the shits. And all of the recent stuff. There’s not been an even halfway decent album in over a decade. And so I went back through the whole catalogue. I like bits and pieces from the first two when he was eager to find his way and bursting at the seams. I like some of the “classic” stuff you hear on the radio still or on the overplayed albums between 75-85 but really there are only two albums of his I actually like and want to hear more than once every now and then. And they are this record and Darkness On The Edge of Town. Darkness is actually the very best of him with his E-Street Band. And this one became the blueprint for sad-sack solo Bruce. So both are good options to carry. They’re about the only records of his I have now. Even sometimes I get the shits with Nebraska, like it’s more about what it symbolises and how it was a determined stripping down, a retreat. It actually doesn’t quite sit nicely together and it’s the rough hinges of it that arguably makes it what it is. That rawness just isn’t there anymore. It’s all sneering polish. And mostly garbage as a result. Like the big cover up is that stupid-ass grin.

Sample Track: Used Cars
The Vinyl Countdown is a document of every LP I listen to, brand new discoveries and old-old favourites; extremely pre-loved, previously abandoned or with the shrink-wrap having just been removed it’s all here at The Vinyl Countdown