Pitchfork

The second video from Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band's forthcoming album Magic barely features the E Street Band at all, except in a few home-movie shots that aren't fooling anybody. Instead, the clip almost exclusively shows the Boss looking thoughtful in a deserted diner (get out before the cops respond) and strumming his weathered guitar in an empty theatre. Meanwhile, artfully edited visions of small-town America blur past-- mom-and-pop stores, carnival rides, empty streets. The song recalls the spirit, if not exactly the sound, of Born in the USA, and like that album's title track, beneath the large and triumphant production runs a convincing undercurrent of loss and sorrow, as if that long walk home allows him to spend time with the dying, whether it's "Sal's Grocery" or "the barbershop on South Street." Toward the end of the song, he relates his father's advice: "You know that flag flying over the courthouse means certain things are set in stone-- who we are, what we'll do and what we won't." If that reads like chest-thumping patriotism on the page, the look Springsteen gives the camera makes the words much more complicated: "Long Walk Home" is not an anthem so much as it is a challenge.