Land of Hope & Dreams by Bruce Springsteen
No disrespect to the four songs collected here from Bruce Springsteen and The E Street Band’s May 2025 European tour opener in Manchester, England, but this may well be the first live record rush-released for its stage banter. Springsteen’s impassioned intro to “Land of Hope and Dreams”—a late-’90s fan-favourite that eventually appeared on 2012’s <i>Wrecking Ball</i>—invoked America’s “incompetent and treasonous” administration, which did not escape the attention of said administration’s leader. The band and crowd respond in kind, audibly gassed up, and the song ends with an interpolation of Curtis Mayfield’s “People Get Ready” that feels as inspirational as it does ominous. Of course, the nexus of inspirational and ominous has been Springsteen’s home turf for over 50 years, just as much as New Jersey has, and he is clearly galvanised by his easy access to a microphone and tens of thousands of rapt listeners when the stakes are so high. His speech preceding the post-9/11 elegy “My City of Ruins” runs three and a half minutes, doubling down on the sentiment of his opening remarks by quoting James Baldwin and reckoning with the difference between the “real” America he’s written about for five decades and the one he now condemns. Ending with a rousing version of Bob Dylan’s “Chimes of Freedom”, this EP’s mere existence less than a week after the show itself is no doubt meant both to amplify the message and further agitate its subject, a canny move that reasserts that Springsteen is at his best when there is a moment to meet.
