Solemn Soliloquy Bruce Springsteeen Revisits America's Beleaguered In His New Album "The Ghost Of Tom Joad." The Stories Are Moving, But The Music Stands Still.

Bruce Springsteen couldn't have picked a better time to release The Ghost of Tom Joad, the mostly solo collection of half-sung mutterings and sociopolitical allegories that arrives in stores Tuesday.

His characters - the forgotten and the displaced, the migrant laborers and the laid-off factory workers - are the people most at risk in the current budget standoff.

They were victims long before last week's shutdown of nonessential federal government operations. They're refugees of foreign wars, and veterans whose health was ruined while defending their country. They're folks who can't afford medical care. Kids who forsake school in search of work - any work. Illegal immigrants who slip across the border to pick peaches.

Casting himself as Tom Joad, the Dust Bowl-era protagonist of John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath, Springsteen puts on his troubadour hat and sings solemn ballads about these decent people, whose diminished prospects make them prey to temptation and the lure of easy money.

Sound familiar? It should. The 46-year-old rocker once known as The Boss has been to the Common Man Saloon before, watching the brawls and soaking up the local wisdom. There was the wrenching Nebraska in 1982 and parts of 1992's oft-ridiculed Human Touch and Lucky Town.

But on his 13th collection of new material, Springsteen firmly positions

himself as a voice of the proletariat, whose mission is no less serious than Woody Guthrie's was in his day.

Drawing parallels between the Depression and unemployment caused by the current bottom-line obsession of corporate America, Springsteen stands up and counts the injustices. "Wherever there's a cop beatin' a guy," he announces on the first track, ". . . where there's a fight 'gainst the blood and hatred in the air, look for me, Mom, I'll be there."

It's a powerful stance, expressed in images as vivid and writerly as any Springsteen has ever recorded. It's also the sound of Bruce vamping.

For the first time in his career, Springsteen seems content to revisit a previous success - the hauntingly austere Nebraska - rather than venture into new territory.

His commitment is not in question, nor is his maturity. The singer- guitarist understands complex problems have no easy answers, particularly when they involve the U.S.-Mexican border.