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At the risk of being called a Bruceophile I'll make my comment anyway. I'm not sure the author of this piece has actually listened to the album. Most of the album, it seems to me, is aimed at those who lost family members on 9/11 and deals primarily with personal loss and redemption.

The songs deal with a variety of feelings that came out of 9/11 including loss, revenge, peace, war, resurrection, duty, faith, etc. These things are dealt with as they come and as they are and Springsteen doesn't seem to inject to much beyond the personal. He really makes no grand political statement and he articulates the desire for revenge several times throughout the album. His only qualification seems to be a desire that the revenge be focused (think before you shoot - tree of evil,tree of good). His statements in interviews that he was pleased with the Afghanistan operation because it was well thought out seems to echo the sentiment on the album.

To me this not a political album and is instead a very personal album. I find absolutely nothing on it with which I can find a political complaint. Even his song about the suicide bomber strikes me as pointing out the deadness of the bomber and the finality of it and puts that in opposition to another path that leads to life.

Springsteen seems to have taken on the idea that he is the heir to Woody Guthrie. We can perhaps find some complaints with that and have some valid criticism of both the concept and the results. But this album, in my opinion, was a labor of love outside that concept. Done for the city of New York and the families of those who died. If I were a family member I think several of these songs would provide great comfort to me.

The song "Empty Sky" is to me, the one song of any that I have heard that captures the morning of Sept. 11. For me, I know that 25 years from now I will be able to listen to that song and capture that morning. To me, that is art. So whatever his politics, or whatever criticisms I may have for "41 Shots", etc., I am always going to be grateful to him for that song.

On your say-so I KaZaA'd Empty Sky. While not complete dreck, it's definitely a forgettable, so-so tune.

The Boss made some good music early in his career, but, as has been mentioned in this thread, he is a 'contrived' --- not a natural --- poet. He understands the power of the profound, but lacks the natural literary tools, the tools Dylan possesses, for example, to convincingly express it. So he settles for ersatz poetry that reflects his meager intellectual gifts.

Springsteen was a pedal-to-the-metal young rocker who sent us all into paroxysms of delight when he sang about the graduation gown at his girl's feet. But as a middle-aged guy, he's kind of a bore.

If I recall, didn't ol' Woody have quite a little anti-Semitic/anti-immigrant streak? I seem to recall Guthrie saying that he wrote "This Land is Your Land" in response to his being "sick of hearing Kate Smith singing 'God Bless America'" written by "the Russian-Jew Berlin." I know that Pete Seeger was a Nazi sympathizer until they attacked the Soviets but I'm not sure that Woody followed suit.