The Rising (Special Package)

1	Lonesome Day
2	Into The Fire
3	Waitin' On A Sunny Day
4	Nothing Man
5	Countin' On A Miracle
6	Empty Sky
7	Worlds Apart
8	Let's Be Friends (Skin to Skin)
9	Further On (Up The Road)
10	The Fuse
11	Mary's Place
12	You're Missing
13	The Rising
14	Paradise
15	My City Of Ruins

Barnes & Noble

It would be a gross understatement to say that anticipation for The Rising was high. Having previewed one of its songs -- "My City of Ruins," which appears here in radically reworked fashion -- on a post-September 11th benefit show, Springsteen made it clear that the album was going to be more than a mere collection of tunes, and he certainly delivers on that promise. For one thing, the album is the first in years to feature the entire E Street Band; in addition, the songs all reverberate with the events of September 11th. On the surface, those two elements would seem to go together like ham and ice cream, but in practice the mixture works stunningly well. On several songs, Bruce revisits the plainspoken blue-collar characters that often pop up in his oeuvre, but here, they face concrete crises, rather than existential ones: The stark "Into the Fire" tells the tale of a doomed rescue worker, while the unsettled "Nothing Man" -- a song of brooding incantation and sharp release -- delves into the survivor's guilt of one who made it out alive. Springsteen departs from tried-and-true formulas on many of The Rising's better songs: Techno beats creep into "The Fuse" (one of the disc's more positive numbers), while the voices of a South Indian choir waft above and around the melody of "Worlds Apart." The ghost of E Street bombast past rears up now and again -- notably on "Mary's Place," which sounds an awful lot like a dusted-off outtake from The Wild, The Innocent & the E Street Shuffle -- but for the most part, the musicians show admirable restraint. That might be a result of producer Brendan O'Brien's careful mix, but more likely, it's the kind of maturity that can only come from a place that's dark, but not without hope. After all, a rising can only come after a fall. David Sprague

Barnes & Noble

It would be a gross understatement to say that anticipation for The Rising was high. Having previewed one of its songs -- "My City of Ruins," which appears here in radically reworked fashion -- on a post-September 11th benefit show, Springsteen made it clear that the album was going to be more than a mere collection of tunes, and he certainly delivers on that promise. For one thing, the album is the first in years to feature the entire E Street Band; in addition, the songs all reverberate with the events of September 11th. On the surface, those two elements would seem to go together like ham and ice cream, but in practice the mixture works stunningly well. On several songs, Bruce revisits the plainspoken blue-collar characters that often pop up in his oeuvre, but here, they face concrete crises, rather than existential ones: The stark "Into the Fire" tells the tale of a doomed rescue worker, while the unsettled "Nothing Man" -- a song of brooding incantation and sharp release -- delves into the survivor's guilt of one who made it out alive. Springsteen departs from tried-and-true formulas on many of The Rising's better songs: Techno beats creep into "The Fuse" (one of the disc's more positive numbers), while the voices of a South Indian choir waft above and around the melody of "Worlds Apart." The ghost of E Street bombast past rears up now and again -- notably on "Mary's Place," which sounds an awful lot like a dusted-off outtake from The Wild, The Innocent & the E Street Shuffle -- but for the most part, the musicians show admirable restraint. That might be a result of producer Brendan O'Brien's careful mix, but more likely, it's the kind of maturity that can only come from a place that's dark, but not without hope. After all, a rising can only come after a fall. The deluxe limited-edition package encases the disc in a hardcover book with a 40-page, full-color booklet that includes extra photos, the Boss's handwritten lyrics, and more. David Sprague

Rolling Stone

With its bold thematic concentration and penetrating emotional focus, [The Rising] is a singular triumph. I can't think of another album in which such an abundance of great songs might be said to seem the least of its achievements. Kurt Loder

Spin Magazine

Obsessed with mortality and suffused with grief, The Rising is the most eloquent artistic response yet to the World Trade Center tragedy. (8) Robert Levine

Entertainment Weekly

Reunited with the E Street Band for their first full album together in nearly two decades, he drips inspiration.... The Rising is a ghost story, but it's more, too -- past and present, celebration and wake -- and few others could have pulled it off. (A-) David Browne

Time Magazine

The Rising is about Sept. 11, and it is the first significant piece of pop art to respond to the events of that day. Many of the songs are written from the perspectives of working people whose lives and fates intersected with those hijacked planes. The songs are sad, but the sadness is almost always matched with optimism, promises of redemption and calls to spiritual arms. There is more rising on The Rising than in a month of church. Josh Tyrangiel