Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band – review

Bruce Springsteen is more than three hours into the show when he raises an eyebrow to the crowd and warns them he fears the plug might get pulled if he plays another song. And with a flourish, he leads the E Street Band into Twist and Shout – finally getting to play the number that was cut short in Hyde Park last summer, though there's no Paul McCartney on stage this time. Steve van Zandt and Garry Tallent take the falsetto hollers, a five-piece horn section adds heft, and you'd swear Springsteen had brought the best wedding band ever to London.

But the E Street Band are so much more than that. The centrepiece of tonight's show is a complete performance of the 1978 album Darkness on the Edge of Town, an album Springsteen describes as being "at the heart of what we do", which deals with themes barely suited to this mass act of communion: doubt and identity, and lives being torn apart. It's one of rock's most profound and ambiguous albums, and its performance is a triumph. As the coda of Racing in the Street ebbs and flows across the 71,000 people in the stadium, the silence is absolute, as if everyone has their own shattered dream to remember. Only Candy's Room, so dependent on precision for its build and release of tension, suffers a little with stadium sound, but it's a tiny gripe.

The run-through of Darkness had not been announced in advance, but it is apparent early in the show that something unusual is in store for the evening, because after only three songs, Springsteen is prowling the front rows of the audience, harvesting signs for requests. And so Rosalita – as explosive an expression of unbridled joy as you can imagine – is played while north London is still light, rather than at the end of the set. Hungry Heart gets a nod after Springsteen notices a sign requesting it and promising souvlaki in return.

His interaction with the crowd is funny and deeply moving throughout – two women are hoisted up to dance in stage during Dancing in the Dark, the older of the two giving Springsteen a come-hither gesture that suggests that if playing for 200 minutes at the age of 63 doesn't give him a heart attack, her attentions surely will. He dives straight in, taking her tenderly in his arms. Maybe one could say it's routine, just showmanship, but the eternal miracle of Springsteen is that he never appears to be faking it for the audience's benefit. It's almost commonplace to say a Springsteen show is another triumph, but – really – he just keeps getting better and better.