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**** Bruce Springsteen & the E Street Band

LIVE IN NEW YORK CITY

(Columbia)

Springsteen’s 2000 tour served up equal parts rock-and-soul revue and amped-up folk troubadour — musical history, social commentary, and narrative portraiture were all of a piece. On this double CD from Madison Square Garden, direct interpolations of Marvin Gaye, Al Green, and Curtis Mayfield segue into distillations of country and folk that feature the full panoply of Springsteen places, characters, and events: rock-and-roll studs, New York cops and Amadou Diallo, Youngstown steelworkers and Vietnam vets. Woody Guthrie is alluded to in the fine new “Land of Hope and Dreams” (with its “This train . . . ” refrain harking to Woody’s “Bound for Glory”). The previously overblown “Born in the U.S.A.” is reclaimed as a hookless, affecting slide-guitar country blues.

And yes, there are soaring anthems aplenty. The crowd — an intrusion in most arena live albums — is perfectly mixed, becoming part of the overall sheen of the E-Street Band’s three guitars and dual keyboards (are those glockenspiels I hear ringing atop týe martial rock-and-roll stomp of “Prove It All Night”?). Even the overlong band introduction/revival meeting can’t keep “Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out” from taking off. Springsteen is these days as immensely popular as he is unfashionable. But with so much pÉny music pretending to be phat, you couldn’t ask for a more complete emotional/musical statement from a major artist. Sure, Bruce still has his detractors, but if this is bombast, make mine a double.

— Jon Garelick