It’s a fucking shame that in this day and age Bruce Springsteen still plays concerts until 2:00 AM while younger bands call it quits at 11. The Boss has been onstage for nearly fifty years at this point. He’s one of the last rockstars to have a nickname, like how Elvis was “The King” and Jerry Lee Lewis is “The Killer” (which he earned by murdering a fan onstage after every performance, a practice he continues to this day). And now Springsteen beats other bands to the punch by releasing the single “We Take Care of Our Own”.
It’s pretty easy to get jaded in this world of irony, and you’d think that this song is dripping in it, especially when you have verse lyrics like “there ain’t no help, the Calvary stayed home / there ain’t no one hearing the bugle blowin’” counterpointed with the chorus of “We take care of our own / wherever this flag’s flown / we take care of our own”. But somehow, it completely swerves from that caustic second-verse negativity to go into a third verse of questioning of the status quo, and the chorus, rather than being the ironic counterpoint to negative lyrics, becomes the answer to the verse’s questions. The lyric “where’s the work that’ll set my hands, my soul free” hits me especially hard, since it’s a question I ask myself every day when I consider my own circumstances of being unemployed, but not so poetically or succinctly.
The production and instrumentation in this song is great. The drums immediately start out the song, providing a solid layer from which the rest is built on top. At times, they’re supplemented by handclaps, which never become overbearing as they sometimes can (like, who had time to clap with all these instruments playing). Springsteen’s jangled, slightly distorted guitar style comes right through, and combines dutifully with chorus of la-la’s. It’s a rich tapestry of sound, which never threatens to drown out Springsteen’s voice. No instrument is too prominent, though the drums are pretty prevalent, but then, this is rock, and rock without drums is like the American flag without the stripes.
