B ruce Springsteen fans get liner notes of the most luxurious, informed and immersive kind with this documentary by longtime Springsteen chronicler Thom Zimny, who charts Bruce and the E Street Band on their current world tour (which returns to the UK and Europe next year, with a possibly-big-enough gap in the schedule on Glastonbury weekend). Springsteen himself is a bit of a cipher, choosing to contribute voiceover bookends which have the staged quality of his Springsteen on Broadway show. In between, his bandmates speak much more off the cuff as they detail the preparations for, and performances on, their first tour after six years away, a gap partly precipitated by Covid.
There’s an amusing moment early on as they gather for rehearsals, drummer Max Weinberg drily noting that the anthemic She’s the One has slowed to a funereal ballad pace in the time away. But they shake off the dust, with Steve Van Zandt declaring they don’t want to be “old men going through the motions ..
. we want to blow fucking minds”. They head out on the road, with Zimny building up a satisfying hybrid of concert film, archival documentary and sociological study.
Crank the volume for the performances, which, though truncated, thunder out to good effect, and allow you to dwell on details closeup: Springsteen gurning ecstatically as he solos; the way he loves to let notes soar with minimalist purity before consuming them in a crash of noise. The distancing effect of the film does, frankly, sh.
