Wazootyman

Along with "All that you can't Leave Behind" this has been one of my most anticipated CDs ever. I remember going to the Springsteen newsgroup everyday in order to get a little update about the progress of the CD, and now today it has finally come out. I just gave it a listen over for the first time and am very very very pleased with the results. The Boss is back baby!!!!

I knew The Rising, Lonesome Day, and Mary's Place were fantastic from AOL's streams of the songs, but I was blown away first and foremost by Paradise, just a deeply touching song with excellent lyrics and music. Phenomenal stuff! Empty Sky was also great, and and uplifting My City of Ruins to close out the album was also fantastic. It's amazing to see how My City of Ruins has evolved from its premiere at his 2000 Christmas shows, to its form at A Tribute to Heroes to its current incarnation.

All in all a really good CD, highly worth it

Doug Schiller

And $10 to boot!

See music industry, when the price is right, you don't think twice about buying it.

Doug

Wazootyman

I got the LE for 14.88 (that's at Target, Best Buy has the normal edition for 9.99)

atlantamoi

$9.99? Wow. Think I might be buying only my second new CD this year! I'm not sure why I still care about Bruce since his lukwarm 90's stuff (although I never heard "Ghost of..."). But something about all he's done for this recording makes me REALLY want to hear it. Hope it's good!

bigjim25

Bestbuy.com has it for $9.99 shipped. LE is $15.99

ViewAskewbian

For the love of The Boss!!! Pick up The Ghost Of Tom Joad. This is such an underated album and, let me say, this is not only my favorite Bruce album but the best disc in my entire CD collection (which is rather vast).

And, at any rate, The Rising is a great, solid disc. It has it slow points and it's rockers although, what I wish it had, was more guitar riffs. Bruce hasn't really rocked out with the guitar solos since Born In The USA and I thought we might see that again.

However, on first listen, many great songs. A different album from a great performer backed by one of the best bands on the planet.

Wazootyman

I just knew that View would be magically drawn to this thread

ViewAskewbian

Just like he'll be magically drawn to the December Springsteen show in Toronto

Gil Jawetz

Listening to it on the subway this morning, "Nothing Man" started as the train went above ground and I got my morning eyeful of the downtown skyline. Man, what an experience. It's kinda weird to be choking back tears on the subway.

JLB

Just finished listening to the whole CD while at work. All I can say is, Wow! This is such a good body of work from the Boss. And I agree, finishing off with Ruins just tops it all off.

This is the first CD I have bought in at least 5 years. With the prices you have to pay for a typical CD, you could buy a multi-channel DVD in DTS. I'd rather have Speed 5-star then shell out the same dough for the latest from Alannis Morisette, or whoever. I agree....See Recording industry....price it right and it will sell. Overprice it and people will burn copies from their friends.....

Wazootyman

Apparently tis selling quite well. They mentioned on the news last night that a local Best Buy had gone through "Hundreds of copies of it" Yay for Bruce

grunter

Listening to "Worlds Apart" for the first time and I think I hear the line:

"I taste the seed upon your lips, lay my tongue upon your scars"



I have to track back the CD player just to confirm what I heard. Then I have to double-check the liner notes to make sure that's what I heard.

grunter cocks his eyebrow and does his best Leonard Nimoy impersonation: "Fascinating."

One_hung_low

The Rising is truly a work of art. Bruce is rocking, the E Street Band sounds awesome, and the lyrics are magnificent. To me, "Into the Fire" is a great tribute to the firefighters, police, and paramedics that were in the World Trade Center on 9-11-01.
"Waitin on a Sunny Day" hopefully will be played live on the upcoming tour. My other favorites are "Further On", "Mary's Place", and "My City of Ruins". You can tell the 09-11-01 influence in a few songs, but they are all really up lifting songs.

chanster

Really enjoy Nothing Man..it makes me twinge a bit. You know that weird twinge when you feel emotions going through you...

Scorpio

Great album!

dolphinboy

so totally agree. i also rarely bother with whole cds anymore. too much skipping the 8 or 9 bad tracks that accompany the 2 or 3 good ones. i've listened to this from 1-15 and nothing else since i got it. maybe the best album (disc) that i've heard in a decade. certainly will make my top 10 of all time (made in my lifetime).

Decker

Another vote for the Boss! Great, great album. Buying concert Tix next Saturday (fingers crossed)
I really enjoy most of the album, but I gotta agree with EW's review that the words "strength" "faith" and "hope" come up an awful lot on this album and remind you how rarely Bruce has used them in the past. Also, I a little , well....disappointed in Paradise (thematically, I mean). He spends nearly the whole album dealing with 9/11 loss and then presents a song with a POV of a suicide bomber speaking of Paradise? I don't get that at all.

That said, I still think the album is a masterpiece. It should finally net him that elusive Grammy for Album of the Year (but I was absloutely certain that U2 would win this year, so what do I know?)

Wazootyman

Is there another classic rocker that released an acclaimed album this year? I think U2 only lost because the voters got split on which Classic Rock group to go with (Bob Dylan vs. U2) and thusly we ended up with O Brother as the winner

(Not trying to put any of the above artists down, I mean Bruce, U2 and Dylan are my top 3 faves, just mentioning some of the politics of grammies)

Psi

Not only is The Rising a great album, but it gets better with every listening. I agree with View that Tom Joad was also one of Springsteen's best, as was Nebraska for me.

JonTurner

In case anyone cares (and doesn't already know), Rolling Stone gave the CD its first perfect 5 star review all year.

For this and many, many other reasons, I predict many Grammys for The Boss next year (best album, best rock album, artist, etc...)

Gil Jawetz

To my ear, the album is almost all excellent. Lonesome Day, Into the Fire, Nothing man, Empty Sky, World Apart, Further On, The Fuse, and You're Missing are all terrific songs. Paradise (the most Tom Joad-ish track) and Let's Be Friends (which sounds like a Keith Richards solo cut) are good. The Rising is simply outstanding, one of his best in a long, long time. My City of Ruins is profoundly moving and will forever be directly connected to the context in which i first heard it, with the smell of the trade center still pungent in the air.

The only real clunker for me is Countin' on a Miracle. It brings the whole disc to a screeching halt. It's so obvious and cliche. Waitin' on a Sunny Day is really cliche as well, but maintains an energy that works for me. Mary's Place is musically cliche and toes the line, but works more than it doesn't.

Norm de Plume

Bringing this topic back to life. I realize this disc has been out for a while, but I just listened to it yesterday. To be frank, I kind of dreaded it, because, although I love much of Bruce's work, I'm not at all fond of the introspective, country-inflected tunes that pervaded Ghost of Tom Joad, Nebraska, Lucky Town, and popped up occasionally in his other albums. It's fine and dandy if a song is well written, as most of his are, but if it's not also pleasing to the ear, I don't have much use for it as music. I'm better off picking up a book of poetry. I was afraid The Rising would be along the same lines, with the band only piping in occasionally. Bruce needs his E-Street boys to sound his best. His voice is too strained and nasal when not backed up by instrumentation.

I was bowled over!!! I'll go out on a limb and say that this is his best album ever. It's certainly the most solid, thoroughgoing lineup of tracks he has ever put on one album, the only two duds (out of 15) being "Let's be Friends" and, nominally, "Empty Sky" (lyrically good, melodically blah). If the album lacks one thing, it's an unqualified masterpiece like "Born to Run", "Brothers Under the Bridges '83", "No Surrender", "Rosalita", or "Badlands". Having listened to the album only once so far, I'd say none of the tracks are truly great, but almost all are very good. Two that stood out slightly from the rest were "You're Missing", and "Lonesome Day", but maybe I'll change my mind after listening to the whole thing again. I'm looking forward to it.

JonTurner

Since it's been brought back to life... I have not been able to stop listening to this album since I bought it about 2 months ago. It is absolutely beautiful (and I've never been a fan of the Boss in the past - not that I haven't liked him before, but I've just never really listened to him before). A few of the songs, in the right situation, have practically brought me to tears... and for music to do that, well, hell, only a live Pearl Jam performance has done it before. The album is just perfection all around... though "Let's Be Friends" shouldn't be on there. It's not a bad song, but it just doesn't fit the mood of the rest of the album, and is really simplistic / cheesy lyrically.

I started to list the other songs that I find beautiful, moving masterpieces, but that's the other 14!!!

If you haven't picked this up yet, PLEASE do!

Norm de Plume

Check out his older albums as well. You'll be pleasantly surprised.

minifigg

Whoa. I just came on here to post about this album, and here is a thread on the front page.
I got it for myself for Xmas for $6.99 at Target.
I am listening to it at work and I am sitting here, sobbing like a little bitch. It has been a while since 9/11, but all of the pain and hope and hurt are here. What an amazing album.
Not that a Grammy means anything, but I hope it sweeps this year.
Unbelievable work.
mini