Bruce Springsteen WRECKING BALL - (M) (ONLINE ONLY!!)

Heavy lies the crown on Bruce Springsteen' head. Alone among his generation -- or any subsequent, actually -- he has shouldered the burden of telling stories of the downtrodden in the new millennium, a class whose numbers increase by the year, a fact that weighs on Springsteen throughout 2012's Wrecking Ball. Such heavy-hearted rumination is not unusual for the Boss. Ever since The Rising, his 2012 return to action, a record deliberately tailored to address the lingering anger and sorrow from 9/11, Springsteen has eschewed the frivolous in favor of the weighty, escalating his dry, dusty folk and operatic rock in tandem, all in hopes of pushing the plight of the forgotten into public consciousness. Each of his five albums since The Rising has been tailored for the specific political moment -- Devils & Dust ruminated over forgotten Americans in the wake of the Iraq war, We Shall Overcome: The Seeger Sessions was an election year rallying call, Magic struggled to find meaning in these