HOW long can Bruce Springsteen keep this up? It must be a stretch being a superstar multi-millionaire who keeps his finger on the concerns of the downtrodden common man.

It might almost be ridiculous, if he wasn’t so good at it.

Wrecking Ball is Springsteen at his angriest, and mostly he pulls it off. Some critics have complained about the broadness of his targets – evil bankers and so on – yet this fits with what are timeless protest songs.

It’s all very rousing and polemical, with opener We Take Care Of Our Own igniting the bonfire.

This is a classic Springsteen anthem which, much like Born In The USA, allies a punchy chorus to bitterly ironic lyrics; pride in nationhood is flourished, and then inverted.

Jack Of All Trades is another of his hymns to blue-collar stoicism, told in the voice of an honest man forced to make do and drawn to conclude: “If I had me a gun, I’d find the/bastards and shoot ’em on sight”.

The title track transforms the demolition of New York Giants’ stadium into a rocking, brass-fuelled anthem about big money destroying all in its path. Rocky Ground is a spine-tingling anthem of rallying in the face of lost hope, while Land Of Hope And Dreams has a Pete Seeger-like pull, and Death To My Home Town sees Bruce turn all Pogues-punkish.

The production, overseen by Jon Landau mostly fits the songs, although at times there is too much going on.

But if you like Bruce, and even if you don’t, this is inspirational music for our times.