It’s laborious to inform the place Bruce Springsteen and The E Road Band finish their foremost set in Murrayfield. “Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out” has stormed to a conclusion and the band seem to have left the stage. Then, you discover Springsteen strap on an acoustic guitar and harmonica holder and stroll again to the microphone.

For the earlier three hours, Springsteen has delivered a mammoth high-energy set, someplace between stadium rock present and soul revue. Taking a lead from final yr’s album of covers, Solely The Sturdy Survive, Springsteen has continued to play to his personal formative soul and R&B influences for this, their first tour in six years. With a couple of prudent changes, the E Road Band lean into their formidable brass part. As a consequence, this isn’t only a band again on the street after an enforced hiatus, however a band reimagining their music in dynamic new methods.

The present began with a run of songs – “No Give up”, “Ghosts”, “Show It All Night time”, “Dying To My Hometown” and “Letter To You” – delivered at pace and with out pause. As magnificent because the spectacle is of Springsteen and his compatriots at full pelt, you may marvel the place it’s heading. Because the mid-Oughts, Springsteen excursions have had their very own distinctive traits, outlined as a lot by circumstance as the rest: 2009’s Working On A Dream Tour was the primary with out Danny Federici; 2012’s Wrecking Ball tour was the primary with out Clarence Clemons, 2016’s The River tour wasn’t tied to a brand new album. Taken collectively, a free narrative emerged, of a band coming to phrases with grief and discovering even deeper communion between each other and their viewers as they performed longer, deeper and heavier exhibits every year. So what sort of tour will this be, precisely..?

The reply comes about 40 minutes in. The opening salvo has given method to a second tranche of songs, loosely structured round themes of reckoning – together with an incendiary “Sweet’s Room”. On earlier excursions, Springsteen assembled setlists on the hoof, however he labored to a formalised construction for Springsteen On Broadway, which was scripted and the operating order largely unchanged. He’s following a focussed, static setlist right here, too: constructing blocks of songs round themes and pulling collectively threads from throughout his profession. This third part, although, finds him going someplace else completely.

A 15-minute soul rave-up of “Kitty’s Again”, from The Wild, The Harmless & The E Road Shuffle, strikes on to a much less frantic, however under no circumstances much less potent, place. If “Nightshift” was initially written as tribute to Jackie Wilson and Marvin Gaye, for Springsteen, strains like “All of us bear in mind you / Your songs are comin’ via” are implicitly addressed to the spirits of Federici and Clemons. “Final Man Standing”, in the meantime, is devoted to George Theiss, from Springsteen’s first band, The Castiles, of which Springsteen is now the only real surviving member. However sung to 70,000 individuals in Murrayfield, these songs grow to be eulogies to the viewers’s family members. We’ve all misplaced buddies, Springsteen appears to acknowledge; a degree he makes clearer a bit later on the finish of “Backstreets” the place he repeats, “All the remainder of you, I’m going to hold proper right here till the tip.” Interested by the title of his most up-to-date album, Solely The Sturdy Survive is perhaps about resilience and a courageous face, however within the context of this tour it might properly even be about power via unity; we’re all on this collectively. This, it appears, is Springsteen’s tour message in 2023.

Springsteen’s nice talent as a performer is his capability to chop via the spectacle to ship moments of appreciable intimacy, the place the showman seems to make approach for somebody extra susceptible and earnest. He revisits this from a special angle on “Wrecking Ball” – the place “laborious instances come and laborious instances go” – and once more later, on the very finish of the set.

However such meditations on life apart, the present hinges on the massive set-pieces and crowd-pleasing moments. There are walks right down to the entrance row; some terrific messing about between Springsteen and Steve Van Zandt; Springsteen ripping his shirt open to reveal his chest; a stunning piece of intimacy with Jake Clemons, who gently leaned over Springsteen’s shoulder to look at him play a solo. And there have been loads of solos – with three guitarists, you’d think about so – together with one from Nils Lofgren throughout “As a result of The Night time” that wouldn’t sound misplaced in Loopy Horse. The ultimate encore – “Born In The usA.”, “Born To Run”, “Bobby Jean”, “Glory Days”, Dancing In The Darkish”, “Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out” – is nearly as good because it will get. However then he straps on an acoustic guitar and steps up for last track: “I’ll See You In My Goals” from Letter To You. A tribute to his departed comrades, designed to succour and uplift, the track’s inclusion on the set shut is obvious: that is Springsteen’s prolonged household, everyone seems to be welcome.

Murrayfield setlist:

No Give up
Ghosts
Show It All Night time
Dying to My Hometown
Letter to You
The Promised Land
Out within the Road
Sweet’s Room
Darkness on the Fringe of City
Kitty’s Again
Nightshift
Mary’s Place
The E Road Shuffle
Johnny 99
Final Man Standing
Backstreets
As a result of the Night time
She’s the One
Wrecking Ball
The Rising
Badlands
Thunder Street

Born in the united statesA.
Born to Run
Bobby Jean
Glory Days
Dancing within the Darkish
Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out

I’ll See You in My Goals