Consumer Guide Album

Bruce Springsteen: Tunnel of Love [Columbia, 1987]
Where Nebraska was plunged in a social despair he never quite made his own, this companion piece comes out of personal compulsion. By depicting the fear of commitment as sheer terror, he does the impossible: renews L-O-V-E as pop subject. First side's got distance, bravado, optimism, even a joke, but then comes one long deep look inside, so well-observed that he seems neither self-pitying nor self-important, just a decent guy with a realistic understanding of his major but not insoluble emotional problems. And although the format is almost as spare as Nebraska's, the man has worked on his sense of rhythm the way he's worked on his marriage, which means he's pleasing to hear with just a drummer or alone. Next thing you know he'll learn to dance. A