The black and white cover of ‘The Promise’ shows Bruce Springsteen, alone, leaning against a dusty convertible car, stopped on an interminable road that runs through a prairie towards mountains and thunderous weather. Romantic posturing then, bringing to mind a well groomed, thoughtful man, taking time away from whatever ‘it’ is to indulge his mind. Stylised and dramatic Bruce is a long way from New Jersey.
Bruce leaning on his car is about as blatant a sign of things to come as you could imagine. From opener Racing In The Street, barely a track goes by without the metaphorical mention of a car; had Bruce been born before Henry Ford, lord knows what he’d have been able to attach himself too. He represents an American generation and their frustrations and aspirations very well - something which has been hard to swallow on his recent output, but is digestible on this release, being as it is material from his mid-seventies heyday. To balance out his automobile affinity, there is also a lot of masculine tenderness on display; he’s no petrol head and he’s not ashamed of it. His voice here is slightly cracked, blunting the boisterousness never far from mind on a Springsteen record. Perhaps this is a result of the forty plus tracks he put down in the year surrounding the release of ‘Darkness On The Edge Of Town’, or maybe he is straining for something new. Either way it’s the sound of a resolute man. A man stretching, wearing down, straddling peril and fighting for everything.
There’s a slight but jarring crack in this record - one I'm not sure how deliberate it’s inclusion is - but wanted or unwanted, it feels tangible and compelling. As Leonard Cohen said, it’s the crack that lets the light in. At this moment I can feel it in the guitar solo from Racing In The Street. The way it sits over the drums and overlaps, seemingly unintentionally, with various sections of the composition - an organic layering, perhaps born in the recording as demo policy, something which would have been tightened up at a later date had the tracks made it to release in the same year. At times this feeling seems to lie in the very levels of recording: an almost unconscious production quality which lends the record a broken but strident personality, intoxicating at times. It makes Because The Night desperate and dangerous, driving home the rare solitude of sexual security in a world where everyone is out for a piece of you - a more physical, less political production than the Patti Smith release.
Unexpectedly, ‘The Promise’ could be described as a good record to give to someone who doesn't like Bruce Springsteen. He’s rarely been more humane and open, and if this doesn’t hook you, I doubt anything will.