Springsteen Album Expression Of Protest

“THE GHOST OF TOM JOAD”

by Bruce Springsteen (Columbia)

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Somewhere between “Nebraska” and “Philadelphia” lies the bleak territory explored on Bruce Springsteen’s new album of understated protest folk. Copping its title from John Steinbeck’s central character in the Great Depression novel “Grapes of Wrath” and likewise echoing the “Tom Joad” song by Woody Guthrie, Springsteen’s “The Ghost of Tom Joad” focuses tightly on a new cast of downtrodden victims.

The album was scheduled to arrive in stores today.

Springsteen’s use of classic folk/ country imagery is likewise unavoidable - from the notion of an unkillable spirit (in the title song) to the geographic name dropping (a la “This Land is Your Land”) in the lightly rocking “Youngstown.” Scored with a tune that harks to “I Don’t Want Your Millions, Mister,” Springsteen’s “The New Timer” focuses on a new Depression-era victim who falls under the sway of a survivor from the last one.

And there are three songs in the vein of Guthrie’s “Deportees,” lined up so we can’t possibly miss the point.

“Sinaloa Cowboys” describes Mexican crop pickers who fall for the easy money of running a speed factory. “The Line” offers the slant of a corrupted U.S.-Mexico border guard. “Balboa Park” sketches a young hustler-smuggler who hides out under the highway in San Diego.

Not quite as minimalist as “Nebraska,” Springsteen’s new album is warmed on occasion with lilting fiddle, keyboards, pedal steel and accordion, bass and drums. And the set builds to a mildly uplifting finale with the sweet dream vision of “Across the Border,” the racial reconcilations of “Galveston Bay” and his ironic stringing together of Forrest Gump-ian homilies in “My Best Was Never Good Enough.”