’41 shots’ & Cinco de Mayo shots: Springsteen brings Land of Hope and Dreams American tour to New York

Is Bruce Springsteen America’s greatest protest singer? He made a decent case for it Tuesday night, when he brought his Land of Hope and Dreams American tour to Belmont, New York. 

“The E Street Band was built for hard times,” Springsteen remarked, as he cherry-picked his massive catalog to spotlight tales of crumbling cities, death and powerlessness, punctuated by the message that hope is possible if we work together. As Springsteen put it in one of several speeches on Tuesday night railing against the current administration, “This American tragedy can only be stopped by the American people.”

Kicking off with the one-two punch of Edwin Starr’s “War” and his own “Born in the U.S.A.,” Springsteen led the band and guest guitarist/vocalist Tom Morello through songs whose titles alone conjured the story he’s telling with this tour: a cover of The Clash’s “Clampdown,” “Death to My Hometown,” “No Surrender,” “Darkness on the Edge of Town,” “My City of Ruins,” “Wrecking Ball,” “Badlands,” “Murder Incorporated” and what Springsteen called “our immigrant song,” “American Land.”

The setlist also highlighted how songs Springsteen wrote years ago — most notably “American Skin (41 Shots)” and “The Ghost of Tom Joad” — are scarily relevant again. They sat comfortably next to his recent song, “Streets of Minneapolis,” which details the deaths of Renee Good and Alex Pretti. Springsteen led the crowd in chants of “ICE out now!” during that number. 

But the show wasn’t all despair and anger: Springsteen lightened the mood periodically with songs like “The Promised Land,” “Two Hearts,” “Land of Hope and Dreams” and “Hungry Heart,” while the encore featured the joyous singalongs “Born to Run,” “Dancing in the Dark” and “Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out.” With it being Cinco de Mayo, he even accepted and downed a shot offered by some women in the crowd.

The show ended on a hopeful note with a song by another great American protest singer, Bob Dylan. Springsteen sang “Chimes of Freedom” and then closed the circle with his walk-off music: Dylan’s mentor Woody Guthrie singing “This Land Is Your Land.”