The Ghost of Tom Joad Released: 21 November 1995Mikal Gilmore, Rolling Stone: 'Bruce Springsteen's best music has always been about the refusal to accept life's meanest fates or most painful limitations. For more than 20 years now, Springsteen's music has worked as a cry of courage, an emboldening reassurance that life, no matter how closefisted it many seem, is worth keeping faith in. The Ghost of Tom Joad tells a different story – or at least it looks at the story through different eyes. It's a record about people who do not abide by life's ruins; it's a collection of dark tales about dark men who are cut off from the purposes of their own hearts and the prospects of their own lives. On this album almost none of the characters get out with both their bodies and spirits intact, and the few who do are usually left with only frightful desolate prayers as their solace.'

Photograph: PR