UKFF Album of the Decade

[Frankie Crisp]

JOINT NUMBER 6 (THE LAST ONE)

Kate Nash - Yesterday Was Forever (2018)

The critics:

"Our generation's Beatles, Franklin, Springsteen, Bennett, Warwick, Sinatra, Ciccone, Kobain, Winehouse, Michael and NWA all rolled into one. A tour de force of an album from the world's greatest living musician and lyricist, let down only by the fact that it's not four days long"

The forum:

"It’s a sad fact of the music industry that Kate Nash – all-round bright spark, actor, and the genius behind the undisputed greatest pop song of 2007, ‘Foundations’ – needed a Kickstarter campaign to fund her fourth album. But it’s also a sign of the unrelenting hard work and ‘go get ‘em’ attitude that she holds. ‘Yesterday Was Forever’ comes eleven years in for Kate, but it’s an album as courageous and fun as any debut.

The fourteen tracks here are pleasingly pop-led, but that doesn’t make them samey. Guitar-driven ‘Life in Pink’ is brazen, ‘Call Me’ holds a catchy backbeat which burgeons into a full-on singalong chorus, and ‘My Little Alien’ is a smooth ditty which looks far beyond planet Earth.

There’s something in Kate’s rhyming couplets – the ingenuity of which is comparable only to King of Sombre Couplets, Sufjan Stevens – that sets off her lyrics. Her rhymes feel so easy, but their meanings remain stark and honest. “Well I wish that I could take you to another time, where everything was cool and my mental health was fine,” she sings on ‘Life in Pink,’ managing whimsy and punch-in-the-face frankness all at once. Standout ‘Body Heat’ is a straight-faced love song about someone who makes “my dopamine levels go crazy.”

"At its best the record is a playful, pulse-raising thrill-ride; and you can see that musical dexterity on display here will be staggeringly impressive or bewilderingly inconsistent, depending on your taste. I guess Yesterday Was Forever, but tomorrow is where we’ll see the best from Kate Nash: this feels like the last step before greatness"

Has old man Frankie heard of them?

EDIT: I might have got the reviews the wrong way around, there. My head's been up my arse after reading about that copy and paste bloke dying.

Edited February 22, 2020 by Frankie Crisp

[Frankie Crisp]

JOINT NUMBER 5

The Mountain Goats - Beat the Champ (2015)

The critics:

"When thinking about populism, it's easy to focus on either the relatable day-to-day struggles of average people — of the majority somewhere in the middle, glorified by so many rootsy tropes — or the more strung-out striving of those at the bottom. In politics and in culture, "the little guy" has typically made it far enough up the ladder to have a voice echoed in anthems and slogans, or else sunk far enough into desperation, homelessness or famine so as to surpass the need for detail entirely.

That's part of why The Mountain Goats' John Darnielle is such a profound songwriting voice: He seeks and studies and otherwise inhabits rarely explored margins, giving breadth, scope, shape and specificity to (mostly fictional) lives lived somewhere between ambition and despair. But he still makes their feelings and experiences universal, tugging at raw emotions that range from youthful frustration to nervy anger to the disappointment and ache that can accompany a lifetime of misfortune and mistakes.

Along the way, Darnielle has recorded and released hundreds upon hundreds of songs under the Mountain Goats name, making it all the more remarkable that he still finds new characters to embody and stories to tell. On Beat the Champ, he takes an ambitious concept — a nostalgic but mostly realistic look at the workaday Southwest underworld of the pro wrestlers he idolized as a kid — and teases it out to album length. Imagine the has-been subject of the 2008 film The Wrestler, then take away the part where he used to be famous; that's the world of "nameless bodies in unremembered rooms" that Darnielle examines with the most frequency and care here"

The forum:

"The Mountain Goats are a lot of fun, and my favourite album of theirs is 'The Sunset Tree', but it came out in the mid 2000s. The Mountain Goats have released multiple albums in the '10s - 'All Eternals Deck', 'Transcendental Youth', 'Goths' and 'In League with Dragons', but their best is by far 'Beat the Champ' - not least because it is a wrestling themed album. 'The Legend of Chavo Guerrero' is a love letter to the eponymous wrestler, 'Foreign Object' an ode to heel work, and Heel Turn 2 is just an absolute joy to listen to"

Has old man Frankie heard of them?

Edited February 22, 2020 by Frankie Crisp

[Nexus]

Fucking hell did so few of us vote that my votes are actually having a big influence? 

 

Can I change my number one please? I feel a profound sense of shame developing!  

[Frankie Crisp]

This is the Crown Jewel of UKFF events.

Edited February 22, 2020 by Frankie Crisp

[Frankie Crisp]

JOINT NUMBER 5 (THERE'S ONLY THREE OF THESE!)

David Bowie - The Next Day (2013)

The critics:

"When The Next Day was announced, speculation ran rampant. The first single, Where Are We Now?, presented David Bowie musing on the Berlin he inhabited almost 40 years ago. The radical album art defaces the centerpiece of his Berlin Trilogy, “Heroes”. Tony Visconti, his frequent collaborator who produced that period, was back. It was all quite transparent: after 10 years between albums, Bowie hasn’t returned to shelve out some catchy art rock, he’s come back to make a statement.

You can chalk what is that statement? up on the list of puzzles to solve. The Next Day is a dense and varied body of work that Bowie has all but outright challenged fans to cross examine. Invoking the “Berlin Trilogy” suggests that The Next Day might be more than meets the eye conceptually, and at the very least, should serve as a red flag that listeners’ wits should be about them. None of the record’s 14 tracks are casual affairs, and only few of them are catchy enough to overcome a passive listen. The latest single, The Stars (Are Out Tonight), is as easy as Bowie will go on listeners without a greater investment of time, and that track still offers a multi-layered experience.

It’s been suggested that the title, The Next Day, could refer to the track Heroes. If we could be heroes, just for one day, then this would be the day afterward. However, the title track is another thing entirely. Inspired by a recent interest in medieval history, Bowie writes a thrashing rock song of priestly conspiracies, angry mobs, and a heathen not quite dead… body left to rot in a hollow tree. Instead, it’s the somber first single, Where Are We Now?, that serves as the only strict tie to Heroes. Had to get the train from Potzdamer Platz, sings Bowie, mentioning a key landmark where the Berlin Wall formerly divided the city. The song could be not only Bowie’s emotional revisiting of a landscape that’s changed so much, but a return to that bold young couple standing by the wall in 1977.

Bowie’s nods to his back catalog don’t start and stop with Berlin. The album’s penultimate track You Feel So Lonely You Could Die could be an important part of the Bowie mythos, waiting to be torn apart by fans: a classically styled rock ballad that ends unmistakably with the opening drums of Five Years from Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders From Mars. This is more than a head-nod to some of his most famous work the song itself is a likely suspect as a follow-up, or perhaps prelude to that story. The lyrics easily fit into Ziggy‘s future world of indifferent, over-indulged youths, five years before humanity’s end.

Coming to terms with The Next Day has been an ordeal and a struggle of initial indifference. One has to dig deep and fight uphill to connect here, but that climb results in a rewarding, fascinating listen. Yet what’s more intriguing is speculating on what The Next Day could become and whether or not any of its mysteries will be solved. As always, Bowie remains in constant metamorphosis and here we are once again with a litter of erratic questions. Though, the mere fact that we’re spinning around in speculation only champions this as a success"

The forum:

"Blackstar has the emotional pull of coming out the week he died, but Next Day is Bowie's real best work of the 2010s. Coming as something of a surprise, it's no shock that it blew away many albums by more contemporary artists"

Has old man Frankie heard of them?

Yes. Bouncebackability.

[Frankie Crisp]

JOINT NUMBER 5

Seafret - Tell Me It's Real (2016)

The critics:

"Every so often an album is brought to our attention which we might not have appreciated fully when it was initially released, but soon caught our attention and left us hooked. Seafret with Tell Me It’s Real is one of those albums; captivating, serene and simply stunning are just some words to sum up why we love this release so very much.

For all of you unaware of Seafret, this Bridlington duo comprises of Jack Sedman on vocal and multi-instrumentalist Harry Draper known for their effortless, chilled out sound without any surprises – just heartfelt efforts.

Opening track Missing sets the tone for the release both musically and lyrically, creating the start of a romantic journey which is going to bring twists and turns with lyrics “you give me something to live for/something to die for”. The climatic build up on this track stops your attention from wandering, almost bringing a sing-a-long friendly vibe with the delicate piano lines and layered guitar efforts. Give Me Something offers an almost acoustic edge with a twist of strings, providing a sense of tension within the melody. It has to be said that although it was released as the band’s debut single, compared to later efforts on this album it’s a weaker track. The spark that Seafret are known for seems to be dimmed here.

With a name like Wildfire we were expecting a vamped up track with a heavier kick, which is exactly what we get. Glistening through the clouds of heartbreak is the happy sunshine rays, the sunshine being the rays of light singing of a happier time when falling in love for the first time. Maintaining their signature downbeat twang, the focus point remains largely on Jack Sedman’s vocals. Breathe could potentially steal the crown for our favourite track on the release: delicate strings and heartfelt lyrics merge with a heavier, angstier kick with both acoustic and bass guitar lines complementing.

Oceans is featured in two forms on this release, one of which being a live BBC version of the well-loved track making you want nothing more than to see the guys live ASAP. Considering the title it’s expected to include the cliché lyric of “there’s oceans between you and me,” but due to the fact that there’s still such haunting power within this track we’ll gloss over that little slip-up. Piano additions soften the blow of a repetitive, power-infused percussion. Seamlessly fusing together this track is simple yet soothing to the soul, which sums up Seafret perfectly.

Be There and There’s A Light bring a bit of spice and heavy power to the release, which is just what we need when we’re hunting for some variation. Be There flaunts the boldest, unpredictable chorus on the release which you’ll find yourself clapping along to as the drum strikes appear. You’re going through a twisty adventure persuaded by Sedman to drive through the track as he reminds listeners “I can’t leave you” – don’t worry Seafret we definitely won’t be leaving you for the foreseeable future! There’s A Light oozeS in indie goodness which is never a bad thing. Few bands can successfully pull off a track which focuses almost solely on raw vocals and mesmerizing guitar lines, yet Seafret do this with ease. Optimistic that there’s a light at the end of the tunnel we see a new approach to love and life focusing on the future, rather than the retrospectives of old relationships.

As the release draws to a close To The Sea sees the first duet of the release with Rosie Carney and maintains the water based theme. Verging on sickly sweet these vocals make you melt and do a little swoon, whilst complementing each other faultlessly. This is a vocal pairing that needs to make a return in the not so long future, as honestly? We’re hooked. Overtime brings the album to a close in the way that Seafret opened it: sharp, snappy and mixed with a hint of folk. “I could be more than a lover, more than a lover to you” pretty much sums up how we feel about this release. We don’t just want to listen to this as a one off,  we want it to be around for the long term and Seafret definitely will be.

Yes, there may be points in which the excessive focus on relationships drives you a little crazy, but the realness and unique lyrics featured make this a small tiny blip. Meaningful music sadly isn’t something we see in the bucketloads in this day and age, but Tell Me It’s Real makes every word sung feel really, really real"

The forum:

"One of the very few albums in recent memory which stopped me in my tracks on the very first listen. Soulful, melodic, heartbreaking, powerful and basically the kind of shit that melts a soft old twat like me. I'm glad it wasn't released on vinyl otherwise I'd have worn the needle down ten times over. Seeing them in person lives up to the anticipation, too, with some of the most beautifully tempered vocals I can ever remember hearing in person"

Has old man Frankie heard of them?

Yes. I adore them.

Edited February 28, 2020 by Frankie Crisp

[PunkStep]

12 minutes ago, Frankie Crisp said:

Seafret - Tell Me It's Real (2016)

[Frankie Crisp]

At least I didn’t make my nominations up out of thin air.

[Frankie Crisp]

JOINT NUMBER 4 (THERE'S ONLY THREE OF THESE!)

Frank Turner - Positive Songs for Negative People (2015)

The critics:

"Frank Turner has proven himself to be somewhat of a divisive and contradictory figure over the past few years. Given his Eton background, many find the rebel punk-folk songs hard to swallow. His triumphant performance at the 2012 Olympics opening ceremony was followed by 2013's 'Tape Deck Heart', which seemed to lack the propulsive energy of his earlier work. Even for a break-up album, the self-deprecation and mostly dour atmosphere didn't sit well.

The folk troubadour's sixth studio release has been presented as his "defining statement" and it's true, the Wessex boy has delivered something truly wonderful. The polar opposite to 'Tape Deck Heart', 'Positive Songs For Negative People' is a joyous and gloriously defiant arena rock affair. Never before has Turner sounded so impassioned, so galvanised by the source material, exemplified no better than on the outrageously catchy 'Get Better'. The opening declaration: "I got me a shovel / And I'm digging a ditch / I'm going to fight for this four square feet of land / Like a mean old son of a bitch" has an air of Springsteen-like determination and resilience to it. The Boss' influence is felt elsewhere on the tremendous E Street rattle of 'The Next Storm', featuring a beautiful, cascading piano hook and a searing bridge.

'Mittens' is a foray into full on FM pop belter territory and it's a transition Turner makes exceedingly well. It's not something so unexpected though, 'Tape Deck Heart's 'The Way I Tend To Be' hinted at the eagerness to move in this direction. By contrast, the aptly named 'Out Of Breath' hinges on a fantastically ramshackle arrangement, only just surpassing the two minute mark. Lyrically, it's his most cohesive effort, but also his most repetitive and in places, his least potent. However, you do get the sense that for perhaps the first time, Turner's words are being driven by the music, whereas before, on 'Love, Ire And Song' and 'England Keep My Bones', it felt like the reverse was true. Just a theory. In truth, it's not much of complaint since everything else here is generally really good, 'Love Forty Down' and it's dodgy tennis metaphor aside.

On the rousing anthem 'Josephine', Turner brilliantly, compares himself to Napoelon and Beethoven, "I'm a defeated commander / I'm a half-deaf composer / I'm a strange name whispered in a dream". The record is also bookended by two exquisite acoustic laments, 'The Angel Islington' and live recording 'Song For Josh'. The latter is particularly affecting, a heart-wrenching dedication to a friend of Turner's who took his own life.

Despite the strength of the record as a whole, the highlight is still irrefutable. 'Silent Key' retells the tragic story of Christa McAuliffe, a victim of the 1986 Challenger Space Shuttle disaster, taking on the idea the astronaut survived the initial explosion and transmitted the message "I'm alive, I'm alive, I'm alive" during the time it took to fall to earth. The result is an uplifting and life affirming epic, awakened by a colossal punk riff before Turner speaks of McAuliffe's "last desperate communiqué". Then, about midway through, the band drops out and guest singer Esme Patterson contributes a mesmeric vocal: "The darkness up above led me on like unrequited love / While all the things I need were down here in the deep blue sea" which is set against a set of slightly discordant but understated, clean guitar arpeggios. It's enough to send shivers down the spine.

This feels like something of an exorcism for the Hampshire-born singer and backed here again by the excellent Sleeping Souls, it's the sound of a man on exhilarating form. It's a significant upgrade from the patchy 'Tape Deck Heart', focused and majestic in execution. "We could get better, because we're not dead yet" screams an emphatic Turner as the final notes of 'Get Better' ring out, and it's this grit and conviction that makes 'Positive Songs For Negative People' such a powerful listen"

The forum:

"Frank Turner is special to me because he's the artist I've seen most often with my fiancee. Sadly, he's outed himself as an absolute fuckwit, and his last album was shit, but Positive Songs for Negative People is excellent from start to finish. A CM Punk cameo in the video for 'The Next Storm', 'Get Better' coming out at a point in my life where my fiancee had been seriously ill, and absolute bangers like "Josephine" and "Love Forty Down" make this my favourite album of all"

Has old man Frankie heard of them?

Edited March 1, 2020 by Frankie Crisp

[wordsfromlee]

Frank Turner is a dirty Tory.

[Nexus]

6 minutes ago, wordsfromlee said:

Frank Turner is a dirty Tory.

and I hate myself for how much I love this album. 

[Frankie Crisp]

JOINT NUMBER 4

Nero - Welcome Reality (2011)

The critics:

"Daniel Stephens and Joe Ray, of London electronic act Nero, are not meant for an obsolete sound system. This is the reason noise-canceling headphones and club tours were invented — a neo-’80s guitar and synth tumult driving dazed masses to sexily gyrate in blue laser light. Past collaborations with top-tier acts La Roux and deadmau5, among others, only further cement the fantasy Nero is trying to construct.

Welcome Reality finds pulsing crescendos, wobbly bass (“Fugue State”, “Innocence”), and Europop (“Guilt”, “Promises”) used delectably well. Labeled a concept work, it instead resembles a dubstep re-imagining of Giorgio Moroder compositions from nearly 30 years ago, Alana Watson’s wispy voice occasionally breaking its monotony (“My Eyes”).

“Crush on You”, one of seven singles, hearkens back to commanding ’90s artists like C&C Music Factory sans hip-hop, shouting the chorus ad nauseum as call-and-response crowd control. “Reaching Out” rides tinkling keyboards and a male voice reminiscent of how Eiffel-65 would’ve sounded had they not been super-focused on singing about Nintendo and blue people. Nero brings up loud, positive electronica bordering MIDI to the Nth degree (“Me and You”), incorporating symphonic bombast and solid, somewhat muted guitar to pleasing effect (“Doomsday”). One minute you rave, the next you grind, yet nothing feels unnecessarily out of control.

While there are no distinctly broader themes than perhaps what Daft Punk explored with Discovery (see: Interstella 5555), this latest UK-bred club record comes down to individual taste. Welcome Reality inversely breaks us from our “desert of the real” to reveal an unseen utopia populated by denizens paralleling ourselves. They are souls without vessels who make love like animals long extinct, who convulse to a disco tune aliens read as a party invite. Had Nero not loitered on their cozy euphoric plateau, Welcome Reality may have given those Tron: Legacy co-conspirators a good fight"

The forum:

Not loved enough for commentary.

Has old man Frankie heard of them?

Edited March 1, 2020 by Frankie Crisp

[Frankie Crisp]

JOINT NUMBER 4

Arctic Monkeys - AM (2013)

The critics:

"It’s been almost a decade since the Arctic Monkeys torpedoed out of Sheffield, England, riding a bunch of sharp pub-punk songs and the kind of ravenous U.K. media hype that often fades like a hangover. But the Monkeys keep on evolving. Recorded in their new hometown of L.A., with buddies like Queens of the Stone Age’s Josh Homme and Elvis Costello drummer Pete Thomas pitching in, their fifth LP is this quintessentially English retro-rock band’s most American-sounding record, especially rhythmically. Black Keys-style garage quiver, dry guitar grind and haunted falsetto-soul backing vocals give cuts like the Mean Streets-referencing “Knee Socks” a cagey noir creep. 

Singer-guitarist Alex Turner does a delicate Velvet Underground lullaby (“Mad Sounds”) and straight love-soldier crooning (“I Wanna Be Yours,” where he promises devotion “at least as deep as the Pacific Ocean”). And he remains an awesomely caustic chronicler of booze-gorged late-night affliction; on the hard-boiled glam processional “No. 1 Party Anthem,” the bar looks like a crime scene (“Lights in the floor and sweat on the walls . . . call off the search for your soul”), and on “Do I Wanna Know?,” AM’s molasses-stomp opener, he’s the worst kind of repeat offender: “Crawlin’ back to you/Ever thought of calling when you’ve had a few?/’Cause I always do.” Wonder how that’s gonna work out"

The forum:

"Alex Turner may have finally disappeared up his own rectum and been swallowed by the idea that he is a modern Elvis, but that doesn't stop the fact that AM is an absolute monster of a record. If anything, their Tranquility Hotel effort just goes to show how good AM is by being so, so far short of it. Exactly what I wanted from an Arctic Monkeys record"

Has old man Frankie heard of them?

[Chest Rockwell]

I can't quite tell if that review is taking a dig at Tranquility Base or not. There both fucking awesome and very different albums.

[Frankie Crisp]

There are no more joint shite positions. The last three are in. What a day.

NUMBER 3

Bruce Springsteen - Wrecking Ball (2012)

The critics:

"Bruce Springsteen's 17th studio album is an overtly political affair, with songs that tackle hypocrisy, greed, and corruption set to a musical backing of Civil War snares, gospel howls, and chain-gang stomps.

"In America, there's a promise that gets made... called the American Dream, which is just the right to be able to live your life with some decency and dignity. But that dream is only true for a very, very, very few people. It seems if you weren't born in the right place or if you didn't come from the right town, or if you believed in something that was different from the next person, y'know..." With those words, Bruce Springsteen summed up his entire ethos-- searching for the American Dream and coming up short and then searching some more-- during a time of rampant unemployment and disquieting economic inequalities. The year was 1981. Yeah, Bruce has been here before.

Back then, Springsteen expressed his blossoming political awareness as well as the no-way-out stories of his friends back in small-town New Jersey with the stark vignettes of Nebraska. Recorded alone on a four-track, the album hovers like candlelight through a pinhole, its hope-deprived characters somberly trying to reconcile faded dreams with the realities in front of them. The album is an empathetic work with Springsteen's disillusionment coursing through it, offering a personalized stamp on America's Promise, and what happens when that bond becomes weak.

Fast-forward to present day: While the State of the Union may feel familiarly shaky, Bruce Springsteen is attacking his country's hypocrisy, greed, and corruption in an entirely different way on his 17th studio album, Wrecking Ball. The keyword is "attack." Several songs here are polemics from a man who has been betrayed one too many times. "If I had me a gun, I'd find the bastards and shoot 'em on sight," he threatens on "Jack of All Trades", while nothing less than the sound of shotgun fire is heard at the climax of "Death to My Hometown". Perhaps inspired by the folk songs he covered on 2006's We Shall Overcome: The Seeger Sessions, Springsteen fills the first side of Wrecking Ball with his own protest music. Like pretty much everything Bruce does, it's a noble gesture-- biographer Dave Marsh pegged him as "the last of rock's great innocents" in the 1970s, and the title still holds-- but it can also sound misguided.

With Nebraska Springsteen was updating the folk music tradition, whether that was his intention or not. The record was insular and personal, which fit its increasingly splintered times. We Shall Overcome was a communal throwback, but it re-energized its dusty source material with spirited performances and an approachable shagginess that's often eluded Springsteen on record over the past couple of decades. Wrecking Ball guns for such sing-alongs-- its musical roots call back to Civil War snares, gospel howls, and chain-gang stomps-- but it fails to support them with ample life.

Part of this can be chalked up to the album's production, which, like nearly all of Springsteen's post-Tunnel of Love material, continually finds a way to professionalize the singer's blue-blooded rawness. While a few E Streeters make cameos here and there, the bulk of the album was played by Springsteen and new studio partner Ron Aniello, whose previous credits include Bruce's wife Patti Scialfa, along with Candlebox, Guster, and Barenaked Ladies. The production isn't a disaster, but most of the stylistic flourishes can feel gimmicky or, at worst, like dry history lessons; the "Taps"-like horns on "Jack of All Trades" could be announcing the song's own funeral, and a startlingly bland concluding guitar solo by Tom Morello doesn't help matters. There's also the tugging sense that Springsteen and Aniello are trying to cover up some of the album's lackluster songwriting.

Springsteen never fell into punk's nihilism in its heyday, instead opting for fuller and more ambiguous pictures of the problems of the American working class. So it's odd to hear him rail against those up on "Banker's Hill" in the sort of black-and-white terms that continue to plague and cleave his home country. Not to say he has a moral obligation to tell the banker's story-- he doesn't-- but his lashing anger largely gets the better of him (and his writing) on Wrecking Ball's opening half, from the simplistic thieves of "Easy Money" to the overly broad characterization of "Jack of All Trades". For Springsteen, the Promise has always been a complex notion, and there's beauty in the tangles. Nothing is easy, not joy nor vengeance. There are always repercussions, always second and third and fourth thoughts behind any given action. "The road of good intentions has gone dry as a bone," he sings on opener "We Take Care of Our Own", and the plea is unfortunately carried through the record's first five songs.

In that light, Wrecking Ball's back half acts as something of a rescue mission, for Springsteen's soul, and for the album itself. The two best songs are here, and not coincidentally they're the oldest tunes of the bunch, ones that were written with the full E Street Band in mind. Both of them-- "Wrecking Ball" and especially "Land of Hope and Dreams"-- also feature the unmistakable sax blares of Clarence Clemons, who passed away last summer. That added emotional weight certainly contributes to these songs' heft, but so does the fact that they fit in with Springsteen's lifelong mission in a way that the rest of the album does not. "Wrecking Ball" was originally written to pay tribute to the Meadowlands' Giants Stadium in 2009, when Springsteen and the E Street Band played the venue's final concerts. And indeed, Springsteen personifies the stadium in the song: "I was raised outta steel here in the swamps of Jersey some misty years ago," he starts. Now, this might seem a little goofy and random. But keep in mind that Giants Stadium was being raised in Springsteen's home state just as his own career was taking off in the 1970s, and that he opened the Meadowlands' Brendan Byrne Arena (now the Izod Center) with six sold-out shows in 1981. These hulks of steel mean a lot to Springsteen-- they're his pulpit. And outlasting one of them is no small feat. Across "Wrecking Ball"'s six minutes, Springsteen is harkening back to his sprawling arrangements of yesteryear, and marking it with a glorious bridge that acknowledges the 62-year-old's mortality while defying it all the same. "Bring on your wrecking ball," he sings, over and over, relishing the joy of this ending.

"Land of Hope and Dreams", written around the time of the E Street reunion tour in 1999, follows suit-- it's sprawling at seven minutes and boasts not one but two prime Clemons solos. (In the Wrecking Ball booklet, Springsteen breaks down the duo's invaluable accomplishment: "Together, we told an older, richer story about the possibilities of friendship that transcend those I'd written in my songs and in my music.") This song is huge, not only in length but scope, and is imbued with an all-encompassing, arena-blowing bigness that Springsteen has shied away from in his new material for years. It rolls along using one of Bruce's favorite metaphors: the train. This is the one Curtis Mayfield was talking about on "People Get Ready" (which is called out here), the one critic Greil Marcus rhapsodized about in his essential tome Mystery Train, the one that welcomes all Americans regardless of class, race, creed. Coming out of Springsteen's mouth-- and Clemons' horn-- it's still a touching ideal, a testament of hope when we need it most. And for going on 40 years now, that's Bruce's job-- to remind us of what brings people together when everything around us seems hellbent on proving the opposite. Too hokey? Probably. But the true power of a song like "Land of Hope and Dreams" lies in its ability to overcome self-consciousness and cynicism, a feat that's tougher to achieve now than ever. Hard times come and go-- why spew anger when exultance is in your grasp?"

The forum:

"Not one of his best? Arguable, but ‘Wrecking Ball, ‘Death To My Hometown’, ‘We Are Alive’ and ‘We Take Care Of Our Own’ are all superb. And this one has great personal significance to me too"

Has old man Frankie heard of them?

Who?

Edited March 6, 2020 by Frankie Crisp