Bruce Springsteen: The Rising

By RUSSELL BAILLIE

(Herald rating: * * * )

Bruce Springsteen might seem the epitome of the American rock elder statesman but he's actually a rarity.

Unlike many who have had it conferred based on those past glories, he has earned ongoing respect even if it hasn't resulted in the sort of sales he enjoyed in the Reagan era.

His previous studio album The Ghost of Tom Joad was a compelling collection of folk songs telling some vivid stories.

The highlight of last year's live album marking his reunion with the E Street Band, was a gripping new song American Skin (41 Shots) about the slaying of an unarmed African immigrant, Amadou Diallo, by New York police who were later cleared of the killing.

And in the movie of High Fidelity his cameo as himself showed he could laugh at being "The Boss".

But what has returned Springsteen to the covers of Rolling Stone and Time magazine as if it were a rerun of his Born in the USA era is The Rising.

The hook isn't that it's his first studio album with the E Street Band since Born ... in 1984, but that it is his post-September 11 album.

And, the theory goes, if anybody can capture America's shock, grief and resolve in the aftermath of the most significant event in its recent history it's going to be Springsteen.

After all, as the uncrowned King of New Jersey he's just across the river from Ground Zero and, therefore, local enough. And the folks who died in the attacks were the sort of ordinary working people he has long written about.

Of course, others have tried to capture those events in rock and pop with some spectacular failures.

Springsteen's fellow "Tribute to Heroes" concert performer, Neil Young, made an appalling hash of saying something profound about September 11 on his Are You Passionate? album. Paul McCartney's song Freedom was equally embarrassing.

By those standards, The Rising is an improvement. Mostly Springsteen songs show a considered, intelligent, literate response but as an album it's not without its set of problems.

The lyrics of the 15 tracks aren't cheerleading and they are ambiguous about their characters' connections to that fateful day.

It's hard, though, not to picture just which Empty Sky Springsteen sings about. Or to know that on Into the Fire the narrator is a widow of a firefighter whose "love and duty called you someplace higher, up the stairs, into the fire".

And throughout the 70 minutes are many other songs of loss and grief and faith - Worlds Apart starts with Pakistani Qawwali chanting with Springsteen's narrator, possibly a US soldier who has fallen in love with an Islamic Afghani woman.

On the best of the album's ballads - You're Missing - that sense of loss is evoked with a few deft strokes but the problem with this album is in how much it sticks to Boss-rock fundamentals.

It might be a lyrically interesting album which packs the occasional emotional punch but musically it's largely a dull and frequently dated affair which can't manage to sustain its energy levels throughout its taxing duration.

And a couple of these songs closely echo Springsteen from his most popular era. The E Streeters may be a great group but on songs like opener Lonesome Day it feels like the same old bar band bluster - the meat and spuds drums, the grandiose string-synths, the high-honkin' saxophone, the ringing guitars.

And slight variations on that approach mean that the likes of Waitin' on a Sunny Day sounds like an updated Hungry Heart, as does the air-punchin' Countin' On a Miracle.

Nothing Man is yet another of those long-trademarked Springsteen mumbly-ballads-over-supposedly-atmospheric-keyboards but a lesser variation on the theme.

And worst of all, Let's Be Friends sounds like an out-take from that long-overdue Huey Lewis tribute album.

Undoubtedly, The Rising will be the soundtrack of the coming first anniversary of September 11.

But Springsteen and band's back-to-basics approach seems incongruous - an album which tries to say something about what it's like to be an American in these troubled times set to music which seems rooted in a distant, secure and comfortable past.

Springsteen's smarter songs here deserve more of that respect.

But judged at this distance - from New York and Springsteen's own glory days - you can't help but think: guess you had to be there.

Label: Columbia