Springsteen albums are usually grand affairs but he’s never made one that sounds so vast and luxurious throughout. Paired with the down-and-out characters who haunt its mountains and canyons, the purposefully anachronistic arrangements—recalling jukeboxes, FM radios, sepia-toned montages, faded memories—carry an elegiac tone. It’s been a long time since popular music sounded like this, and it ties these characters to an era as much as a place.

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