5 keepers
keeper avg .500
Though sonically similar to the songs from the preceding Born To Run, one needs only look at the lyric sheet of Darkness On The Edge Of Town's opener "Badlands"**** to see that Springsteen is moving away from the verbose, cinematic ambitions of his early albums (Thunder Road: 422 words, Born To Run: 340 - jeez). While hardly terse, "Bandlands" is punchy and concise by comparison. From Springsteen's hammering intro lead "Adam Raised A Cain"**** is every bit as menacing as the title suggests, turning "Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out" into a snarl. The frantic "Candy's Room"**** is the excitement of an explosion waiting to happen, which Springsteen lets loose with his screechy Fender Esquire-slash-Telecaster at 1:25. Of course the album has some ballads and they drag, especially the long-winded "Racing In The Street," at almost 7 minutes, and appropriately-named "Factory"; "It's the working, the working, just the working life" - just listening to it feels like soul-crushing labor. The album also includes a couple decent mid-tempo americana rockers (before that was a thing), the country-rock "Promised Land"**** and earnestly declarative "Prove It All Night"****. It's not the album's most exciting track and had to have helped make John Cougar Mellencamp happen (reference "Small Town"), but "Promised Land" has some great moments, such as his delivery of "mister I ain't a boy, no I'm a "may-on!"" and the overwrought, tongue-twisting end of the third verse (Blow away the lies that leave you nothing but lost and brokenhearted). It's an unassuming but important album that transitions from sprawling, singer-songwriter-y works to more concise statements.
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