Bruce Springsteen

Bruce Springsteen’s Devils & Dust is split between detailed character studies accompanied by somber, sometimes sleep-inducing music, and up-tempo tracks that only occasionally transcend lyrics that are sui generis Springsteen—you know, rising above, falling behind, shadow and doubt, that sorta thing. Sometimes the whole thing feels a bit more like an intellectual exercise than something from the artist’s heart.
You could say the same thing about Springsteen’s last mostly acoustic album, 1995’s The Ghost of Tom Joad, and come to think of it, a lot of people did. But when the Boss took to the road for a solo tour following the album’s release, he not only redefined those songs but even recast anthems like “The Promised Land” and “Darkness on the Edge of Town” in a completely new light. Those shows were as electrifying in their own way as his legendary performances with the E Street Band.
So it comes as no surprise that the songs from Devils & Dust come alive in concert, even if this 9,000-seat venue—the Continental Airlines Arena, cut in half by a curtain—wasn’t particularly well-suited to a solo affair. But Springsteen is one of the few artists capable of making even a stadium feel intimate, and the performance was more like an acoustic version of an E Street show, covering more ground emotionally and musically than he did on the Joad tour.