Bruce Springsteen: The Promise

[rating=2.50]

The Promise consists of material Bruce Springsteen wrote and recorded in 1977 and 1978 in the process of preparing Darkness on the Edge of Town. In his essay in the accompanying booklet, Springsteen tries to explain why he’s gone to such lengths in revisiting this album but he ultimately misses the point in describing the significance of the most musically and emotionally pure work he’s ever recorded (this side of Tunnel of Love).

Even in this comparatively streamlined two CD presentation (also included in a much more expansive package), Springsteen is merely making a long-winded case for the truth of his choice back at the end of the 70’s. . A select few of the songs on these two cd’s have some cache of their own: “Because the Night” brought some deserved mainstream fame to Patti Smith, while The Pointer Sisters version of “Fire” was the biggest hit they ever had. Springsteen himself played “Rendezvous” and “The Promise” in concert around this period of his career and it’s easy to see why: the former distills a style he admits in his liner notes to be based on influences ranging from Phil Spector to Elvis Presley, while “The Promise” is one of the most (perhaps the most).honest ballad The Boss ever wrote.

In concert The Boss played the latter solo at a grand piano so to hear it here with strings undermines much of its stark impact. But the additional orchestration is in line with most of The Promise which sounds like nothing so much as outtakes from Born to Run. Tracks like Wrong Side of the Track” are the work of an artist unsure of his own personal style, while (“Someday) We’ll Be Together” reminds us Bruce Springsteen was subject of almost as much criticism as praise in his early days, largely because of the derivative nature of his songwriting and arranging.

The Promise may in fact reawaken the controversy, except that here he’s borrowing from himself rather than Van Morrison and Bob Dylan), and in doing some Springsteen expends no little effort to romanticize his own mythology. Rather than exhume these twenty-one tracks (and ‘complete’ some of them with modern-day overdubs), Bruce Springsteen would’ve done his legacy justice by simply issuing the original album, in remastered form, with a DVD of the 1978 live performance form the other edition. Then perhaps this slightly over-sized digi-pack would justify calling attention to itself.