REVIEW: Bruce Springsteen, MVP Arena, Albany, N.Y.

At age 74, the Boss swaps athleticism for gravitas

Apr 17, 2024

Bruce Springsteen (courtesy Shore Fire Media)

The third time’s the charm, as they say, and the twice-postponed concert by Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band finally took place on Monday, April 15, 2024, almost exactly a year and a month to the day after it was originally scheduled for the MVP Arena in Albany, N.Y.

And no surprise to anyone, it was totally worth the wait, as a seemingly healthy, vibrant Springsteen performed one of his legendary, 28-song, three-hour-plus concerts, turning the sold-out arena into a nightclub in the way that few others seem to manage. Credit his everyman and everywoman appeal, his astounding catalog of great songs, and the devotion of his fans, many of whom have been attending his concerts for fifty years (as have I) in something approaching a religious ritual. Indeed, one friend who was there described it as a cult-like relationship. The exchange of energy between the Boss and the expanded version of the E Street Band (including a horn section, a chorus of singers, and a percussionist) and the crowd drove each to greater heights of passion and intensity. If it had been any more passionate and intense, the roof may well have blown off.

At age 74, Springsteen no longer runs around the stage like a maniac. The leaps onto and off the piano are a distant memory, and Springsteen wisely paced himself, physically and vocally, in order to maintain his energy level over the course of three hours. (Way back when, his concerts lasted a seemingly impossible four hours.) And that pacing worked, as his energy never seemed to flag, even as the dramatic arc of the concert was something akin to a roller-coaster ride, from dark, moody mid-tempo ballads to dramatic, nearly frenetic rockers – mostly played with nary a pause in-between each other.

Springsteen also did not ignore the fact that he has been performing for well over a half-century. Mostly eschewing nostalgia, even his oldest songs gained gravitas and new or additional significance with the passage of time and the realities of aging and mortality. Springsteen chose to open the concert on a somewhat somber note with back-to-back songs from his 1978 album Darkness on the Edge of Town.“Candy’s Room” and “Adam Raised a Cain” offered hints that the concert he had planned for us, while boasting moments of celebration, triumph, and community, would also touch on, well, the darker sides of life. Again, not a total surprise, given how open Springsteen has been over the past decade -- mostly notably in his memoir and his Broadway stage show – about his personal struggles with depression and mental illness plus the loss of friends, musicians, and family members. Given this relatively new context, familiar songs were invested or met with new layers of meaning.

Springsteen has long been the prophet of the false American dream, the bard of the overlooked, underemployed, and the merely forgotten. As a younger man, he sang these songs as much for their promise of liberation and their espousal of bygone values; today, songs like “Promised Land,” “Racing in the Streets,” and “Bobby Jean” are more about coming to terms with the loss of hope and the inability to transcend the bad hand so many are dealt.

But there was still transcendence to be found in Springsteen’s performance and that has always been his power, his secret weapon. By baking bleak narratives into music inspired by gospel, R&B, and heartland rock, in songs like “Backstreets,” “Because the Night,” and “Badlands,” all of which he rendered with urgency on Monday night, Springsteen is able to offer at least momentary succor, through community, solidarity, and the urge to dance. It’s no accident that one of the last songs he played was “Dancing in the Dark” and that the penultimate song of the concert was a cover of the Isley Brothers-by-way-of-The Beatles chromosomal hit, “Twist and Shout.”

Everything Is Broken

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