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Tyler: Travis, I’m a rookie-league Bruce Springsteen fan, familiar with certain peaks and gems, but far from versed in every album, let alone professional trivia like what the Boss led with some Tuesday night in Jersey in 1976. I love the guy, but I can’t preach the gospel. 

With all that noted, I came into our subject this time with a slight familiarity—I’d listened years ago, even picked up a copy, but before these weeks I hadn’t given it time to sink in.

Time, too, I think it does require for Tunnel Of Love to really bear reward. To my ear, the proceedings at first felt muted, but not sketched in great detail. That is of course ludicrous, as Springsteen is at his best a deft and rich storyteller.

He’s also a bandleader, too, his legendary E Street Band beefing up studio releases—like 1984’s grand success Born In The U.S.A.—and barreling through hours-long shows throughout calendar years. They had retreated in certain past releases, but never to this kind of, call it, moderate effect. This isn’t solo Bruce, like the stark Nebraska. But it is something quieter, a melancholy release, notably the musician’s divorce album.

In 1987, I was too young to catch the difference, the progression, from, say, U.S.A.’s “Glory Days,” which I knew as a kid and loved, to Tunnel’s “Brilliant Disguise,” which I never actually heard until adulthood. There’s a major difference between the two, that’s for certain.

What were your feelings coming into this one? Were you familiar with the album we’ve come to discuss?

Travis: I was not familiar with the album. I’d sort of absorbed the knowledge that Springsteen’s Glory Days (pun intended) ended with Born in the USA, which I’m not that big on anyway. It’s got some great songs on it, but the production, especially the big chintzy 80s synths, is grating, and for someone as profoundly American as Springsteen to not know it’s called a “fastball” and not a “speedball” plays nearly into my theory that ol Bruce is kind of a fraud (albeit a talented one with several great albums, some good ones, and assorted other good songs here and there). So, other than listening to I Love 9/11: The Album once and being subjected to the cheeseball humina humina huminas of his song “Denzel Washington learns not to be homophobic and cures AIDS”, I haven’t much explored post Born in the USA Bruce.

All my off-color jokes aside, I liked Tunnel of Love a lot more than I thought I would. The production is just as dated (in a different way) as that of Born in the USA but for the most part I actually think it works for the mood of the album. “Brilliant Disguise,” my clear standout from this album, fits in with the Boss’s best, E Street or otherwise, a tune that’s so instantly familiar I swear I know it by heart even though I’ve never listened to these jams before. This is overall a really solid album. There are a few clunkers (which I’m sure we’ll discuss) but overall a rewarding, if not always enjoyable, listen.

Tyler: I would not describe Springsteen as a fraud, at all in any context. I think he had an unexpected later-era pair of successes with The Rising, which I consider at turns rousing and cathartic, as well as 2007’s Magic, an unassuming and very very good set of songs.

As for “Streets Of Philadelphia,” I consider it an achievement as well. His collection of Pete Seeger tunes, at which I imagine your eyes would roll out of your head, is a blast.

I’m gonna further back the Boss as an American rock icon, unfortunate “speedball” drop or not, and I do think the contrast between his most famous, often grandiose albums and the efforts we have on Tunnel fuels Tunnel‘s successes. Springsteen is very aware of the advantages brought to him by talent and fame—the fancy car on the album cover and the self-aware romantic album-opening rockabilly lament “Ain’t Got You” knock that acknowledgement out right away—and pushes here to break through that to narratives that often function as adult-level pleas, to romantic partners or, in one case, fathers. Not every song is as successful as the others, like you say, but I’m with you about the production fitting the material somehow someway. I did go back to U.S.A. for a quick listen in approaching tonight, and the whole thing does feel very tinny and loud, at times even a hint garish.

Gone is all that on Tunnel. I really rather like it too. It’s got a reflective depth and occasional, well-applied gloss. It’s not perfect, but I think it works.

Travis: It’s also nice to hear him go small-scale. We know he can do the big rousing anthems and the stark and sinister murder ballads from what I think are two of his three best albums, Born to Run and Nebraska, and he sort of combines the two vibes on Darkness on the Edge of Town, which I’d say rounds out his top trifecta. All three of those have a mythic energy. His characters on those are larger than life in good and bad ways. On Tunnel of Love we have people with romantic problems. I’ve never been on a highway jammed with broken heroes on a last chance power drive, but I have had crippling doubts in the middle of a dysfunctional relationship.

Tyler: Truly. There’s an emotional universality here that comes from hitting certain ages, enduring darker “real life” milestones and tests. I love “Rosalita” to the moon and back, but I’ve heard it a million times, for one, and the writing company never did come through with an advance—thus, having had sadder, cooling partnerships in the past, it was cool to hear Tunnel’s appealingly-vulnerable, fading-love-familiar musings. Like a comedian setting the record straight with a dramatic turn, Springsteen pivots, to often-striking effect. That ain’t always easy, whether or not Bruce has been “doing what comes naturally.”

Travis: “Rosalita” is for hitting the bars when you’re 21 and drinking still makes you feel seven feet tall, bulletproof, and God’s gift to women. This album is for being 35 or older and having regrets and being sad but also displaying some maturity. That makes the album sound bland; it isn’t, though, just rings true. The songs are meticulously crafted and, for the most part, lyrically sound. Well, except for “Cautious Man,” in which he says “When something caught his eye he’d measure his need/And then very carefully he’d proceed.” Just do a Tom Petty kinda rhyme, man, you don’t gotta force it, you can write songs in your sleep!

“Cautious Man,” lyrically and everything-else-ly, is my biggest stinker from the album. I also didn’t much care for “Walk Like a Man” or the title track, and “Valentine’s Day” also yucked my yum. Everything else, I at least liked. “Brilliant Disguise” I’d rate great, and “Tougher than the Rest” will probably rank pretty high on the imaginary list of Springsteen deep cuts someone will someday probably never ask me for. The sound of that one in particular, and “One Step Up,” I think jammy classic rocky indie rock band The War on Drugs stole their whole shit from those two songs.

Tyler: I really really dig “Tougher Than The Rest.” That, I think is the one that truly draws me in.

Travis: Thinking back, I also kind of think “I’m On Fire” belongs more on this album than it did on Born in the USA.

Tyler: Incidentally, one thing that’s vanished here, apart from a dismissive nod in “Ain’t Got You,” is Springsteen’s forever use of “little girl” as a romantic, oft-carnal term of endearment. That might seem nitpicky, but there’s gotta be something to its absence here.

Travis: Speaking of “Ain’t Got You,” it reminds me of George Michael’s “Faith” in the way it plays with the Bo Diddley beat and the bouncy rockabilly acoustic on a song that sounds nothing like actual early rock music. While I prefer “Faith,” as one does, it’s an interesting tune. I didn’t notice the lack of “little girl” here, but I did notice the complete lack of proper names.

No Candy, no Wendy, no Bobby Jean.

Makes me think he’s writing more about his own life than filtering it through characters.

Tyler: There’s that universality. Kudos to him for being aware of his go-tos, those lyrical tendencies every artist has. Sometimes those grow stale and the musician keeps at it to diminishing effect—and there’s a discussion to be had about what is and best isn’t worth exploring in Springsteen’s post-‘07 catalog—while other times the artist strips those stilts away and goes for something more difficult. Those results ain’t always favorable, like when Beck looked inward to his tubes-and-pipes dry ice machinery cling-wrap soul to excavate the pseudo-plaintive wrong-romance Scientology-heartbreak slog Sea Change. Other times, you get this, where you’ll find a hushed, genuine gem like “One Step Up,” which captures something pictorial and lost at the same time. Who knew the Boss had such problems at home? And that he could willfully crack open the veneer and spill about them, to comforting effect?

I might cut the Beck-bashing because it’s just so damn unnecessary.

Travis: No need to cut the Beck bashing. There’s plenty of times when artists “get personal” and “go back to basics” and it is hilariously awful and reveals them to be soulless automatons. I’m glad that, at least in this instance, it didn’t happen to Springsteen.

To kind of move toward wrapping up, where would you put Tunnel of Love in the Springsteen canon? For me it’s definitely below the triumvirate I mentioned earlier, Born to Run, Darkness at the Edge of Town, and Nebraska. But I would also definitely place it above his first two albums; other than a song here and there, neither really grabs me. I’d also probably put it above The River. The River has more songs I absolutely love, but by virtue of being a poorly edited double album, it also has way more songs I find totally forgettable. I can’t really speak to anything beyond that, other than to take further potshots at the aforementioned song and album we’ll have to agree to disagree on: deeply cynical tragedy porn for emotional tourists.

Tyler: I like Tunnel Of Love a lot and just might rank it pretty high. Brass tacks, though, it’s such a drastic contrast to, say, Born To Run that it almost feels like a different artist.

I’ve been told that, similarly, the latter-day Springsteen album Western Stars is a departure and a worthwhile listen. There are two versions of the collection, one of which was associated with one of those pesky album-accompanying films that always leave my experiences with the work feeling fractionally incomplete. Though I suppose I shouldn’t crack wise about having too much content.

Bruce! The Boss! Showing us the inner workings and not ruining everything else. I’m content with this outcome.

Travis: Since we’re talking Boss, I must include the note that as someone who worked at a grocery store Ticketmaster counter, Springsteen fans were the absolute worst, most entitled dickshits to deal with. They were worse than ICP fans, Korn, Eminem, Aerosmith, Garth Brooks, even Deadheads, who were notoriously mean to employees. I hated dealing with his fans so much it made me discount his music for years. One such entitled boomer fan complained to my boss about not getting through the line fast enough for him to get floor seats for a particular Springsteen show, and then when I explained that scalpers and pre-sales and radio stations and all that generally scored the best tickets anyway, he complained again and I got written up. But he also was a customer at the grocery store’s video department, so it was easy to look up his address, and after my last day of work, me and some friends decorated his yard with prosthetic limbs and feet.

Tyler: Lessons learned then. If you’re gonna bare your soul, use caution; if you’re gonna be a jackass, take it up with corporate. Otherwise you might be Beck with a bunch of mannequin meat in the lawn.

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