Consumer Guide Album

Bruce Springsteen: Land of Hope & Dreams [Columbia, 2025]
Not much new musically on this live, six-track, four-song, born-in-the-U.K. EP. For one thing, many Springsteen fans already own live versions of "Land of Hope and Dreams," "Long Walk Home," "My City of Ruins," and the Dylan hymn "Chimes of Freedom." What is new—newer than you'd figure, given how long and hard Springsteen has preached his democratic leftism—is that a third of the record is devoted to the unabashed speechifying that peeved our plump, trusseted prexy so much he devised the witticism "dried-out prune" to pin on Springsteen, thus, said prexy is stupid enough to "think," putting the quietus on Springsteen's half-century career. Instead what happens is that the speechifying vitalizes what even nonobsessives like me and you might otherwise file away as extraneous remakes of honorable but not necessarily classic protest songs that work in tandem with the speechifying to drive home their stubborn determination to "make America great again" before it's too late. And with all respect to Rachel Maddow, for instance, the way Springsteen's spoken words beef up the already political songs is even more vital and heartening. [Inspirational Stage Patter: Now, there's some very weird, strange, and dangerous shit going on out there right now. In America they are persecuting people for using their right to free speech and voicing their dissent. This is happening now. In America the richest men are taking satisfaction in abandoning the world's poorest children to sickness and death. This is happening now. In my country they're taking sadistic pleasure in the pain that they inflict on loyal American workers. They're rolling back historic civil rights legislation that led to a more just and plural society. They're abandoning our great allies and siding with dictators against those struggling for their freedom. They're defunding American universities that won't bow down to their ideological demands. They're removing residents off American streets and without due process of law are deporting them to foreign detention centers and prisons. This is all happening now. A majority of our elected representatives have failed to protect the American people from the abuses of an unfit president and a rogue government. They have no concern or idea of what it means to be deeply American. The America that I've sung to you about for 50 years is real and regardless of its faults is a great country with a great people. So we'll survive this moment. Now, I have hope because I believe in the truth of what the great American writer James Baldwin said. He said, "In this world there isn't as much humanity as one would like. But there's enough." Let's pray.] A