| I feel compelled to respond to many of the reviews of this album that suggest "saving your money and buying the original Nebraska album", etc, etc. Does anyone actually think the point is to compare this project to the original Nebraska album? It's a tribute abum, isn't it?Springsteen's masterpiece is a spare, moving account of the American dream's casualties for working class America, with all its heartache, violence, and redemption. It's dark and beautiful and you want to hear it over once you've got to the end of it, endlessly. But l;et's not forget that's why these artists are honoring him and these songs in the first place. With that said, I really love this tribute record. It's done with taste, in the album's original order, and features some great artists doing rather daring and original takes on songs (including some nice duets) that have been covered very rarely over the past 25 years. The album even includes some wonderful bonus tracks! What more could you want? If I had to make a criticism, perhaps it would be that the songs don't flow as smoothly together as the original LP, but how could it really? The songs here are meant in the end, I think, to be taken singly and reveal the depth and scope of this one album's influence on an unlikely cast of living characters, many of whom are producing great music today. Maybe we should all be a bit more grateful and just have a little bit of fun with this one... |
The reviews for this product are sadly typical of what is becoming an all-too-large portion of the fan-base for bluegrass, americana, and country music: the kind of people who would listen to this album and "try to like it," rather than just see if they did, or "listen to it with headphones" through their high-end system with airless gold-plated biwiring. The kind of people who haven't ever understood what bluegrass, country, or americana music mean to real people. The kind of people who listen to Johnny Cash because it's now trendy to do so, and have one Hank Sr. album but can't name the tracks on it, even as they decry Hank Jr. and Hank III as devaluing the family name. The kind of people who profess their love for Wilco but "don't get" Son Volt and Uncle Tupelo.
But country, bluegrass, and americana aren't about these people. These people may financially facilitate the promulgation of the music, but it will never be about or for these people. It is about the kind of people you find on Bruce Springsteen's Nebraska, and on this tribute.
It's incredibly disingenuous to suggest that the only artist who "made the song his own" on this compilation is Johnny Cash. If anything, Cash's cut might be the weakest. And that's saying something, because it's not bad by any stretch.
1) Nebraska (Chrissie Hynde/Adam Seymour)--It would be pretty hard to top or even approximate the haunting title track of the original album. Although Hynde's breathy, overdone vocal stylings might be more appropriate for a Pretenders album than for a reinterpretation of a grim, weary Boss classic, you can't argue with the instrumentation, and the point of the song is still driven home. 7/10.
2) Atlantic City (Hank Williams III)--Absolutely the gem of the album. Hank Williams III is one of the greatest torchbearers for the dying spirit of true country music, and he applies his strategies to the one song on the original album that never felt like it belonged. Way too AOR for the rest of Nebraska, Atlantic City was the song you always skipped as you played through the album. Hank III gives the lyrics the treatment they always deserved, and fully makes the song his own while musically delivering much more fully than the Boss did on what the lyrics spoke about. 10/10
3) Mansion on the Hill (Crooked Fingers)--Skillfully recalling Springsteen's vocal stylings without emulating them or ripping them off, Eric Bachmann complements his band's typically tasty, lush, but not too slick instrumentation and production for a reimagining that may not be completely faithful to the track you used to listen to, but is 100% faithful to the spirit Springsteen was trying to conjure up. 8/10
4) Johnny 99 (Los Lobos)--Picture the Springsteen original in your mind. Now picture the way the Boss lovingly updated all those Pete Seeger classics on We Shall Overcome. That's the treatment that Los Lobos apply to Johnny 99. Sounds basically the same, but with some fun new instrumentation that wasn't possible in the original Nebraska's solo-acoustic-guitar format. At times, this cover feels like it's almost too much fun for its lyrics, or too much fun for an album like Nebraska--but music can never be "too much fun," can it? 9/10
5) Highway Patrolman (Dar Williams)--One of the weaker cuts on the album, this cover is plagued by the problem with so many female country singers: Dar Williams sings too clean. Save that kind of singing for the slick Nashville hucksters that the masses can eat up, or for the too-earnest folk that college kids think makes them better people for listening to; real country music (or americana, in the case of a Springsteen cover) doesn't just tolerate harsher, dirtier vocals--it demands them. It's too bad, because the instrumentation isn't bad. Still, this song deserved better than Dar Williams. 5/10
6) State Trooper (Deana Carter)--I wouldn't have expected this good of a cut from someone like Deana Carter, yet somehow she cuts through her typically heavy production to achieve much of the same quiet urgency that Springsteen evoked, a deadlier version of the feeling you got when your dad almost whispered at you to go to your room after you swore at your mother. Carter also eschews a lot of her usual annoying Nashville conventions for a much hipper sound and style. 8/10
7) Used Cars (Ani DiFranco)--The original is the kind of folky rock that you could be as comfortable kicking in your car stereo as playing by yourself on a guitar on your front porch. Ani DiFranco is the kind of rocky folk that, as discussed earlier, makes college kids feel like they're better people for listening. While she turns in an impassioned delivery of the original, there's something about her twisty-turny approach to what is supposed to be a down-home style of music that leaves you wanting better. When the roots of the country/americana/folk/bluegrass style first sprang up in Appalachia, is this what they had in mind? Bottom line: you just can't believe lyrics like "my dad sweats the same job from mornin' to mornin'" from a style like this. 6/10
8) Open All Night (Son Volt)--Nobody's got alt-country cred like Son Volt do. Their frontman, Jay Farrar, was half of the duo that made up Uncle Tupelo. The other half was Jeff Tweedy, who went on to front the more successful Wilco. But while Wilco might sell more albums, Son Volt maintain a closer tie to the themes and styles of Uncle Tupelo, and they deliver on those themes and styles in this cover. They slow the Boss's lyrics all the way down to a lonely, twangy, country waltz that sounds just as natural for the lyrics as the original music did. 10/10
9) My Father's House (Ben Harper)--Here's what should have happened with Ani DiFranco's cover. An artist whose typical style isn't particularly in line with the Nebraska album, or with country, bluegrass, americana, or even classic folk, takes on a Bruce Springsteen song and makes it his own WITHOUT sacrificing the musical environment that gave birth to the original. This song is both unequivocally an American folk song, and undeniably a Ben Harper song. 9/10
10) Reason to Believe (Michael Penn/Aimee Mann)--The husband and wife deliver a final cut to the tribute album that almost serves its purpose better than the final cut on the original album did. After a collection of disillusioned, hard-working, despairing, American-Nightmare narratives, Springsteen turned it all on its head, recasting the whole thing in a hopeful light, reminding listeners that no matter what hardships life throws at the working man and woman, they still get back up on their feet and push onwards. As Jarvis Cocker wrote, "they burn so brightly you can only wonder why." Penn's and Mann's vocals, reminiscent of Steve Earle, capture that cynicism, while the instrumentation rises toward the heavenly and hopeful. 9/10
The album is rounded out with three rather useless and counterproductive tracks. Nebraska, like so many of the best Springsteen albums, was a concept piece, a fully realized work of art, not a collection of songs. Tacking three songs onto the end is the biggest mistake the album's producers made, regardless of how good or bad the tracks actually are.
Cash's cut, as mentioned previously, is among the weaker ones on the album, but still a pretty strong recording. He applies his latter-day career's well-worn technique of putting sparse instrumentation, lush production, and his almost too craggy vocals on a classic chestnut. Raul Malo's reading of Downbound Train is a great listen, and makes you think of some of the Beat Farmers' greatest moments. With Rose Thomas, Damien Jurado delivers an abominably boring version of what is supposed to be a searing, evocative song. 7/10, 8/10, 2/10, but they don't factor into the tribute's review, as they don't belong on this tribute.
Overall, it's a good solid tribute with some reworkings, some reinterpretations, and some full-on reimaginings, and on the whole, it works out pretty good. Kind of like life in Nebraska. 8/10 |
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"For people who like Springsteen's Songwriting but not necessarily his style"
"Big disappointment"
"Somewhat disapointing"