Once a decade, Bruce Springsteen feels the urge to make a stripped-down roots album. In the 1980s it was Nebraska. In the 1990s, The Ghost of Tom Joad. Now comes the third. Laden with folk and country influences, many of the songs on Devils and Dust date from the late 1990s, but were delayed when he felt compelled to respond to September 11 with The Rising; thus they sing of mothers and fathers, sons and lovers and a world in which apocalypse takes a back seat to the Everyman themes of faith, trust, dreams, hopes and fears.

Lyrically, the songs are all character-based and strongly narrative. It is too early to say whether Devils and Dust possesses the mythic potency that characterises Springsteen’s greatest albums, but there is a warmth and humanity here that bodes well.

(Columbia)

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