Wednesday, March 11, 2009

Darkness on the Edge of Town

Esquire sent me an e-mail yesterday with 75 albums they say every man should own. I decided to procure the ones I didn't own. Now I've decided to make it a feature on my blog. Everyday I'm going to listen to one and record my thoughts. Today we start with...



Upon looking over the titles of these songs, there's three types of Springsteen song titles. Biblical, Industrial, and Darkness. Of course I know this isn't true, but focusing on this album, it is.

I'm two songs into this album. I certainly love it. It sounds exactly a Bruce Springsteen album should. What is that you say? It sounds like a lot of auto mechanics get together at the garage after work and they just jam out. I really get this great image of these guys sitting on the hoods of cars playing when I listen to Abel Raised a Cain, especially in the backing vocals.

All of the songs are really solid. They are really ordered well too. I've always been curious about the process that an artist goes into with the track listing of an album. All of the recordings I've done have essentially functioned as demos, so we never really put much thought into it. But this album seems to have a really great up and down progression. Hard and dirty, slow and heartfelt, hard and heartfelt, and slow and dirty, in that order for the most part.

Final summation:8/10 It's definitely a guy album though. Something I picture my dad listening to while he's doing housework on Saturdays.

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