Great songwriters can always surprise us. Just when you think they’ve tackled every possible topic in every possible musical setting, they release a song that seems to come out of nowhere to floor you.
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That’s a pretty good description of “Hunter Of Invisible Game”, a song released by Bruce Springsteen in 2014. It utilized a sci-fi concept set against movie-score strings. Lo and behold, Springsteen dropped an out-of-nowhere classic on us.
“Game” Theory
We all know that Bruce Springsteen tends to record way more material than he needs for any given album. Most artists would give anything to have a catalog anywhere near as vast and affecting as the stuff that Bruce decided couldn’t make the cut.
In some cases, the reason they’re left behind has nothing to do with quality. Springsteen toils to ensure that his albums present a complete, coherent listening experience to his fans. If that means some outliers have to get lopped off the running order, so be it.
Of course, nothing is ever really lost in these days of reissues and re-releases. Springsteen has done an excellent job of going back through his rejects and eventually bringing them to the light of day. With its strange subject matter, you can kind of see how “Hunter Of Invisible Game”, recorded in the early 2000s, was initially lost in the shuffle.
Fortunately, Springsteen devoted an entire studio album to just such songs from that era that he’d left unfinished or unreleased. That album, High Hopes, featured “Hunter Of Invisible Game”. Springsteen clearly held some affinity for the song. He and his go-to filmmaker Thom Zimny created a ten-minute short film based on it later in 2014.
Exploring the Lyrics of “Hunter Of Invisible Game”
Springsteen does a thorough job in his lyrics for “Hunter Of Invisible Game” of evoking the horrible environment associated with a Mad Max-style hellscape. His protagonist wanders this bereft land of “empty cities and burning plains.” All the while, he’s looking for something that can offer him redemption.
In between his descriptions of the carnage, he takes the time for reflection. “We all come up a little short and we go down hard,” he says. Moments like these suggest his setting is mere allegory. Springsteen is finding a novel way to describe the tumult and loneliness of everyday existence in the most extreme terms.
“Through the empress of dust, I chant your name,” he sings. Lines like that ground this wild tale in the familiar emotional terrain of lost love. He sets out on a quest to vanquish the enemy tormenting him, however illusory that enemy might be. “Down into the valley, where the beast has his throne,” Springsteen moans. “There I sing my song, and I sharpen my blade.”
The penultimate verse brings this startling couplet: “Strength is vanity, and time is illusion/I feel you breathing, the rest is confusion.” Springsteen brings the narrative to a conclusion with a prayer that his listeners can steel themselves for when their own lives resemble a wasteland. “There is a kingdom of love waiting to be reclaimed,” he promises.
Meanwhile, the string section plays stirring melodies that you might expect to soundtrack a movie about pioneers on the wild frontier. It’s the perfect juxtaposition for the lyrics of the time-scrambling “Hunter Of Invisible Game”, where Bruce Springsteen gets downright futuristic to depict modern malaise.
Photo by Kevin Mazur/Getty Images for Bruce Springsteen
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