Heart of Darkness

In January 1982, Bruce Springsteen recorded a bunch of demos on a four-track Portastudio in his New Jersey home, intended as templates for the follow-up to his blockbusting double set, The River. Instead, ten of the songs, in their home recorded form, became Nebraska , a stark soundtrack to an economic downturn in America on a scale not seen since the Great Depression, a noir album evoking the southern Gothic literature of Flannery O'Connor and the ghost of Fifties' serial killer Charles Starkweather, among others.

In Heart of Darkness , David Burke evaluates the album's American folk roots, places it in the context of Springsteen's entire body of work and hears from a generation of artists who cite it as a major influence.