Record Details - RecordDB

Record ID 2037

Artist Bruce Springsteen

Title Working On A Dream

Field / Genre Rock

Year Recorded 2009

Label Sony

Pressing Aus

Rating ****

Discs 2

Media CD/DVD

Date Bought 27 Jan 2009

Cost ¤22.00

Cover Name —

Review From its bright, brittle production to its tossed-off postage stamp cover art, Working on a Dream is in every respect a companion piece to Magic, an album that's merely a set of songs, both sprawling and deliberately small, songs that don't necessarily tackle any one major theme but all add up to a portrait of their time. Magic chronicled the dog days of Bush where Working on a Dream is designed as a keynote to the Obama age, released just a week after the inauguration of the U.S.'s 44th president and not coincidentally containing not a little optimism within its 13 tracks. This sense of hope is a tonic to the despair that crept into the margins of Magic but it's easy to posit Working on a Dream as pure positivity, which isn't exactly true: a hangover from W lingers, most vividly in the broken spirit of "The Wrestler," and Bruce mourning departed E Street Band member Danny Federici with "The Last Carnival." Springsteen peppers his tribute with assets/images recalling the early days of the E Street Band but saves a revival of their wild, woolly sound for the opening "Outlaw Pete," a cavernous, circular, comical epic reminiscent of Springsteen's unwieldy portraits of rats on the Jersey Shore. "Outlaw Pete" is Working on a Dream at its best, playing like nothing less than The E Street Shuffle as reflected and refracted through Arcade Fire's naked hero worship, casually highlighting how producer Brendan O'Brien has gently nudged the Boss toward new musical avenues.Many of these new sounds are drawn from the past, often feeling informed by Little Steven's Underground Garage -- Van Zandt and Nils Lofgren's guitars chime like the Byrds; the band knocks out a tough little blues number on "Good Eye"; and Springsteen shows a knack for pure pop on "Surprise, Surprise" and indulges his ever-increasing Brian Wilson fascination on "This Life," whose percolating organs and harmonies rival the High Llamas. All this rests nicely alongside the Boss' trademarks -- galloping rockers that fill a stadium ("My Lucky Day") and their polar opposite, his intimate acoustic tunes ("Tomorrow Never Knows") -- which all make Working on a Dream read like a rich, inventive, musical album...which it is, to an extent. The ideas and intent are there, but the album is hampered slightly by the overall modesty of Springsteen's writing -- by and large, these are small-scale songs and feel that way -- and hurt significantly by the precise, digital production that muffles the music's imagination and impact. A large part of Springsteen's appeal has always been how the E Street Band has sounded as big and open as his heart, but Working on a Dream, like Magic before it, has a production that feels tiny and constrained even as it is layered with extraneous details. It's possible to listen around this production and hear the modest charms of the songs, but the album would be better if the sound matched the sentiment.— Stephen Thomas ErlewineWorking on a Streak is more like it. First, there's that Golden Globe for "The Wrestler", then a performance at the We Are One concert at the Lincoln Memorial, a handful of Grammy noms for a two-year-old song, a greatest-hits package exclusive from Wal-Mart, this weekend's Super Bowl halftime show, and a just-announced reissue of Darkness on the Edge of Town. So that Oscar snub can't sting too much. In the middle of a pretty amazing month, Bruce Springsteen is releasing his 16th studio album, one whose title sounds more like a campaign slogan than a rock record. Maybe that's intentional: After spending much of this decade playing up to listeners' notions of post-9/11 recovery and conjuring up bleak visions of Bush-era America, the Boss settles into some sense of contentment on Working on a Dream, as if that Dream had already been achieved. In this regard, the album sounds like the final installment of a trilogy he began with The Rising in 2002 and continued with Magic in 2007—ignoring Devils & Dust, which isn't hard to do, and We Shall Overcome: The Seeger Sessions, which remains his best and most freewheelin' late-career album.Tracing his personal—and, arguably, our national—mood from wounded to outraged to somewhat contented, these albums are linked by Springsteen's ongoing collaboration with producer Brendan O'Brien, whose work has grown increasingly capable and adventurous with each release. Despite removing any trace of regional shuffle from these songs, O'Brien puts them across like the proficient bar band they are, roaring through "My Lucky Day" and "What Love Can Do" with professional abandon. O'Brien erects an impressive 1960s wall of sound on "Surprise, Surprise", with its carnivalesque organ and girl-group backing vocals, and in general he streamlines the E Street Band's sound to highlight one central melody or riff. Opener "Outlaw Pete" rides an ascending/descending theme not dissimilar to KISS' "I Was Made for Loving You". Strings protrude from the song at odd angles, Springsteen's vocals echo through what sounds like a deep valley, and Roy Bittan contributes a hyperactive organ as the song spins a yarn about an outlaw so vague he sounds only theoretical. The track is overstuffed with ideas, and at eight minutes, it's a strange, ineffective opener, setting a curiously detached mood for an album that is, for Springsteen, typically engaged.Of his three E Street Band releases of the 00's, Working on a Dream is the one that most sounds like a solo album, indulging a range of ideas that reveal Springsteen as still musically curious and more than willing to play around with his sound. Another American rock saint—Brian Wilson—shows up in the walking bass line on the title track as well as in the Pet Sounds percussion and ba-ba-ba's of "This Life". The scribbly guitar on "Life Itself" recalls the Byrds on "Eight Miles High" more than Nils Lofgren or Steve Van Zandt, providing a tense backdrop for Springsteen's pleading lyrics. The garbled-blues "Good Eye", one of the album's weirdest tracks, ratchets Springsteen's distorted vocals to a yelping beat and electrified banjo, but like his recent one-off download "A Night With the Jersey Devil", it feels like merely a demonstration of studio technique.Working on a Dream works hard on sound, but sleeps on actual songs. "Queen of the Supermarket" may be the worst thing he's ever written, an overly symphonic ballad about crushing on the stock girl. It's sweet, but there's something about the high-flying strings and the intensity of the imagery ("A dream awaits in aisle number two") that suggests parody. The checkout beeps that help the song out to its car certainly don't dispel the wink. "At night I take my groceries and drift away," Springsteen sings, but here his working-class identifications sound a little condescending and inappropriate. Just as "57 Channels (And Nothing On)" failed to convince anyone that Springsteen watched a lot of TV, "Queen of the Supermarket" can't persuade listeners that he does his own grocery shopping. Now that his big dream has come true, Springsteen doesn't seem to know what to do with himself. So he's trying to do everything.— Stephen M. Deusner, Pitchfork

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