Tomorrow I’ll Walk These Tracks

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EHNlq0AWr_E?feature=oembed&w=459&h=344]

It seems like everyone in a Springsteen song is always going someplace, or wanting to leave wherever they may be. That explains the car imagery; it sure beats a bunch of songs about people strolling down the highway.

And there’s always truth inside, of course, but a bit of a pose too; there’s only so much rock music you can write about how great things are in this exact moment. It requires a certain level of bluffing to stand up and say you’re in a town full of losers and you’re pulling out of here to win, or that you’ll sleep out in the fields and in the morning you’ll make a stand.

On “Across The Border,” Springsteen isn’t posing at all. Instead there’s a gentle ache, tempered by hope. It’s a glimmer of that thing with feathers amid Springsteen’s bleak 1995 folk record, The Ghost of Tom Joad. He opens up the record’s sound to include light violins and backing vocals. It’s a ray of sunrise peeking out from beneath the night’s brutal storm clouds.

It’s an album about the loss of hope, actually, but there’s this lonely beacon, and what’s perhaps an unexpected admission after the stories he’s told:

For what are we
Without hope in our hearts
That someday we’ll drink from God’s blessed waters

Without hope, we’re just standing still.