Springsteen LP cuts deep

The sixth and best studio album of Bruce Springsteen's 33-year recording career contains none of the anthemic grandeur present in his previous five records. There are no sax solos or rousing hymns to the working man, and there's nary a hit single to be found. In fact, the only thing on display during Nebraska's stark 41 minutes is Springsteen's voice, harmonica and the forlorn ripples of an acoustic guitar.\nThe usual cast characters (honest, sincere men and women trying to weave their way through a world of hardships occasionally punctuated by fleeting moments of pleasure, release, redemption or transcendence) that populate Springsteen's songs are replaced here by a sordid, suspicious and more downcast lot. The title track recounts the story of the Charlie Starkweather/Caril Ann Fugate murders also dramatized in Terrence Malick's 1973 film "Badlands," and "Johnny 99" tells the tale of a man who drunkenly murders a convenience store clerk only to receive 99 years in prison. "Atlantic City" focuses on a criminal for hire, and both the epic "Highway Patrolman" and ghostly "State Trooper" dive into the tortured psyches of murderers and those who care for them despite their misdeeds.\nNot all the songs deal with criminals, however. The somber "Mansion on the Hill" depicts a simple man living in a town overshadowed by an imposing mansion atop the hill outside of town, and how the goings-on around the house inspired in him a mix of awe and fear as a child and still today. "Used Cars" might well be the most emotional track on the record, with Springsteen detailing a low-income family's search for a suitable automobile, while "Open All Night" is to Nebraska what "Prove It All Night" was to Darkness on the Edge of Town; a desperate ode to getting home to your girl.\n"My Fathers House" and "Reason to Believe" are poignant album closers, the former painting a surrealist dreamscape as its protagonist fights his way through the branches and brambles to find his fathers home, only to discover it, in reality, vacated. The latter, despite its imagery of dead dogs and graveyards, represents a flicker of daylight penetrating the darkness of the rest of the record.\nNebraska is a testament to Springsteen's awe-inspiring deftness with characterization, lyricism and song craft, as well as to the singular austere quality of his voice. Regardless of all the murderers and hopeless characters found on Nebraska, the albums final lines echo with hope in the face of the impossible.\n"Congregation gathers down by the riverside / Preacher stands with his Bible / Groom stands waitin' for his bride / Congregation gone / The sun sets behind a weepin' willow tree / Groom stands alone and watches the river rush on so effortlessly / Wonderin' where can his baby be / Still at the end of every hard-earned day people find some reason to believe"