I am rather disappointed with Bruce Springsteen's long-awaited new album, "Darkness on the Edge of Town." And I am not even altogether sure why.

It's not that I don't think there's a lot of good music here. But it's my opinion that Springsteen's recorded output till now constitutes the finest body of work by any rock-and-roll musician in this decade, and I'm kind of bugged that his new album is unlikely to alter the contrary opinions of those cold-hearted folks not already on his side. There are a lot of reasons why it won't. For starters, "Darkness" is much more of a piece than one would have expected. It sounds very much like a live set, and the arrangements, as a result, have a certain sameness. For another thing, it's a very down-tempo effort—not so much ballad-heavy as it is restrained, without the multiple bridges and the r-&-b flashes of earlier albums. Most tellingly, there are several bits here—melodic snippets, lyric lines, even vocal mannerisms …—that we've heard before, and in better songs. This doesn't bother me particularly …, but somebody who thinks that Springsteen is a Johnny-One-Note endlessly rehashing overheated teen dreams is not going to revise that opinion after hearing "Darkness."

Unless, of course, he really listens to it. In point of fact, this album is quite a bit different thematically from anything the man has done before, and I think Springsteen was absolutely right to remind an interviewer that you wouldn't knock a new John Ford movie just because he's done other westerns. Granted, Bruce is a genre writer, but the story of "Darkness on the Edge of Town" is as different from that of "Born to Run" as Stagecoach was from My Darling Clementine….

The story running through the album is a surprisingly bitter one. The kid who at the close of Thunder Road was pulling out of town to win has now grown up some, settled down, gotten married, and, by the end of the record, divorced. The easy promises of freedom have all gone sour, and whether he's been totally ground down by it all is left hanging somewhat ambiguously. The crucial song is Racing in the Street, which, despite its lyrical tie-in with Martha and the Vandellas, does not change the fact that it's too depressing to dance to. And that, I suppose, probably accounts for most of my dissatisfaction with the album. I have not, heretofore, looked to Springsteen for the somber, unrelieved mournfulness of a Jackson Browne.

Yes, there are some great things here—such as Badlands, a big martial rocker that's as potent as any he's ever written, and Candy's Room, which is a new departure musically, with its quasi-Yardbirds guitar riffs and insinuatingly sexy melody…. So if "Darkness on the Edge of Town" doesn't really work at parties, if I insist upon being disappointed because it doesn't measure up to something he did three years ago when the world was a different place and both he and I were different people, well, that's my problem, not Bruce's. And for all my nitpicking, I'd still rather listen to the Boss on an off day than almost anyone else at his or her most inspired. Ask me again about this one in six months. I'll probably love it.