Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band

When Bruce Springsteen released The Rising, he maintained that it was never meant to be an album about 9/11. Rather, it addressed the aftermath. And in all of music’s attempts to capture the raw emotion and paranoid uncertainty of that period, his is the only one to stick. Even Toby Keith’s flag-waving, shit-kicking threat never went beyond novelty. In the end, it was Springsteen’s everyman whose mourning, anger and confusion imbued The Rising with heartfelt honesty. That’s exactly why it isn’t surprising to watch Springsteen’s DVD release from his Rising tour and understand that those feelings translate to any language. Spurred by a crowd that pushes Springsteen nearly as hard as he pushes himself, the Boss and the band pace through this two-disc set with ferocious energy. The old-school E Street hits take center stage, including a hard-driving “Dancing in the Dark,” but cuts from The Rising also resonate. From the title song opener to the hymnlike “My City in Ruins” and all the emotional territory traveled in between, Springsteen and his E Streeters are in complete control, even as they remind us how little control we really have these days.