Record Reviews
📝 2096 reviews| Artist | Title | Review |
|---|---|---|
| Bruce Springsteen | Lucky Town | <p>Reportedly, Bruce Springsteen recorded most of Human Touch in 1990, but left it unreleased. He returned to work in the fall of 1991, intending to add a song, but ended up recording a whole new album, Lucky Town, and then decided to release both records at the same time in the spring of 1992. He might have been better off pulling a couple of the stronger songs from the earlier album, adding them to the later one (which runs less than 40 minutes), and shelving the rest. While Human Touch was a disappointing album of second-rate material, Lucky Town is an ambitious collection addressing many of Springsteen's major concerns and moving them forward. Here was the rage and the humor, the sense of compassion, the loyalty and commitment that had been the stuff of Springsteen's best music from the beginning. Songs like "Better Days" and "Local Hero" commented on and deflated the commercial success with which Springsteen clearly felt uncomfortable; "If I Should Fall Behind" and "Book of Dreams" expressed romantic fidelity and generosity; "Souls of the Departed" contained scathing social commentary; and "My Beautiful Reward" was a meditative epilogue. The lyrics were better, the arrangements tighter, the performances more powerful than those on the companion release. If Lucky Town, like Tunnel of Love and Human Touch before it, sounded a little under-produced, it nevertheless had the mark of the major artist Springsteen is, and if he had released it alone, it might have had a more significant impact.</p><p>— <strong>William Ruhlmann</strong></p> |
| Bruce Springsteen | In Concert (DVD) | <p>Another superb live performance in a career filled with them, <i>MTV Unplugged: Bruce Springsteen in Concert (Plugged)</i> finds the Boss at an interesting point in his life, musically and otherwise. Working without the E Street Band (except keyboardist Roy Bittan) for the time being, having divorced one wife and married another (singer and bandmate Patty Scialfa), Springsteen had released <i>Human Touch</i> and <i>Lucky Town</i>, two "solo" records, about eight months before this November 1992 MTV appearance. Selections from those two underrated albums account for over half of this 114-minute set's 19 songs (including three that weren't part of the original broadcast), and while Bruce is still Bruce ("Human Touch," for instance, is a classic Springsteen song), some changes are definitely apparent. He has always been an impassioned performer, but he seems genuinely energized by the presence of Scialfa (can "Red-Headed Woman" be about anyone but her?) and his young new band, including guitarist Shane Fontayne, drummer Zachary Alford, and no less than five backup singers. These folks rock their butts off, basically, especially on a wild, extended version of "Light of Day"; there's even some experimentation happening, like the various sound effects added to "57 Channels (and Nothin' On)." OK, so there's no "Born in the U.S.A." or "Born to Run"; as far as standards go, you'll have to be satisfied with "Atlantic City," "Glory Days," and an acoustic "Thunder Road" (Live in New York City, another superb DVD, is heavier on the hits). Anyway you slice it, Plugged is another welcome addition to the Springsteen catalog.</p><p>— <strong>Sam Graham</strong></p> |
| Bruce Springsteen | Streets Of Philadelphia (EP) | <p>In addition to its appearance on the Philadelphia soundtrack album and as a two-track single, Bruce Sprlngsteen's "Streets of Philadelphia" was also released as the title track of this five-track maxi-single. The moody ballad, seemingly as much about homelessness as about AIDS (the subject of the film), marked a surprising commercial comeback for Springsteen, rising into the Top Ten, going gold, and earning him an Oscar and four Grammys. The other four tracks, "If I Should Fall Behind," "Atlantic City," "Growing Up," and "Light of Day," all came from Springsteen's 1992 MTV Unplugged video concert and had not been released on record in the U.S. previously, though all but "Growing Up" had been released on the European CD In Concert/MTV Uplugged.</p><p>— <strong>William Ruhlmann</strong></p> |
| Bruce Springsteen | Tunnel Of Love | <p>Just as he had followed his 1980 commercial breakthrough The River with the challenging Nebraska, Bruce Springsteen followed the most popular album of his career, Born in the U.S.A., with another low-key, anguished effort, Tunnel of Love. Especially in their sound, several of the songs, "Cautious Man" and "Two Faces," for example, could have fit seamlessly onto Nebraska, though the arrangements overall were not as stripped-down and acoustic as on the earlier album. While Nebraska was filled with songs of economic desperation, however, Tunnel of Love, as its title suggested, was an album of romantic exploration. But the lovers were just as desperate in their way as Nebraska's small-time criminals. In song after song, Springsteen questioned the trust and honesty on both sides in a romantic relationship, specifically a married relationship. Since Springsteen sounded more autobiographical than ever before ("Ain't Got You" referred to his popular success, while "Walk Like a Man" seemed another explicit message to his father), it was hard not to wonder about the state of his own two-and-a-half-year marriage, and it wasn't surprising when that marriage collapsed the following year. Tunnel of Love was not the album that the ten million fans who had bought Born in the U.S.A. as of 1987 were waiting for, and though it topped the charts, sold three million copies, and spawned three Top 40 hits, much of this was on career momentum. Springsteen was as much at a crossroads with his audience as he seemed to be in his work and in his personal life, though this was not immediately apparent.</p><p>— <strong>William Ruhlmann</strong></p> |
| Bruce Springsteen | Secret Garden (EP) | <p>This 24-minute, five-song EP contains two versions of the title song, a meditative ballad about the mysteries of women, the first the version heard on Greatest Hits and the second a different take done with an appealing string arrangement that gives it some of the flavor of such early Bruce Springsteen songs as "Incident on 57th Street." The disc is filled out by a live version of "Murder Incorporated" recorded at the New York nightclub Tramps in early 1995 with the reformed E Street Band; "Thunder Road" from the 1992 MTV Unplugged show, previously unreleased in the U.S.; and "Pink Cadillac," previously released as the B-side of "Dancing in the Dark" in 1984.</p><p>— <strong>William Ruhlmann</strong></p> |
| Bruce Springsteen | Hungry Heart (EP) | |
| Bruce Springsteen | The Ghost Of Tom Joad | <p>In 1982, with Ronald Reagan in the White House and much of America torn between a newly fierce patriotism and the dispassionate conservatism of the dawning "Greed Is Good" era, a number of roots-oriented rock musicians began examining the State of the Union in song, and one of the most powerful albums to come out of this movement was Bruce Springsteen's stark, home-recorded masterpiece Nebraska. In 1995, Bill Clinton was president, America was congratulating itself for a new era of high-tech peace and prosperity, and Springsteen returned to the themes and approach of Nebraska with The Ghost of Tom Joad, an album that suggested little had changed in the past 13 years -- except Americans had gotten better at ignoring the increasingly sharp divide between the rich and the poor, and that illegal aliens who had come to America looking for the fabled Land of Milk and Honey were being forced to shoulder a heavy and dangerous burden in America's underground economy. With several of its songs drawn directly from news stories, The Ghost of Tom Joad is more explicitly political than Nebraska (more so than anything in Springsteen's catalog, for that matter), and while the arrangements are more full-bodied than those on Nebraska (five cuts feature a full band), the production and the overall tone is, if anything, even starker and more low-key, with the lyrics all the more powerful for their spare backdrops. While there's an undertow of bitterness in this album's tales of an America that has turned its back on the working class and the foreign-born, there's also a tremendous compassion in songs like "The Line," "Sinaloa Cowboys," "Balboa Park," and the title cut, which lend their subjects a dignity fate failed to give them. Individually, these songs, either angry or plaintive, are clean and expertly drawn tales of life along this nation's margins, and their cumulative effect is nothing short of heartbreaking; anyone who pegged Springsteen as a zealously patriotic conservative in the wake of the widely misunderstood Born in the U.S.A. needs to hear this disc. The Ghost of Tom Joad failed to find the same audience (or the same wealth of media attention) that embraced Nebraska, but on it's own terms it's a striking and powerful album, and certainly one of Springsteen's most deeply personal works.</p><p>— <strong>Mark Deming</strong></p> |
| Bruce Springsteen | Greatest Hits | <p>Here's the challenge in putting together a Bruce Springsteen compilation: though he scored 18 Top 40 hits (12 of which made the Top Ten) through 1994, Springsteen is not a "singles artist." Some of his biggest hits have come with his slightest or least characteristic material; he has written numerous songs that were hits for other artists; and some of his most memorable songs were not released as singles. While a Springsteen "hits" collection logically would contain such Top Ten singles as "I'm on Fire" and his cover of Edwin Starr's "War," few Springsteen fans would miss their omission; on the other hand, many would support the inclusion of "Blinded by the Light" and "Pink Cadillac," Top Ten hits for Manfred Mann's Earth Band and Natalie Cole; and anyone even remotely familiar with Springsteen's albums and concerts would have trouble countenancing the absence of such non-singles as "Rosalita (Come Out Tonight)" and "Thunder Road." Facing this challenge, Springsteen has adopted his own set of criteria. First, he seems to have wanted to pack as much music onto a single disc as possible, the result being a CD-busting 76:47 running time. Second, he seems to have wanted to include as many tracks as possible, even if that means editing songs; as a result, 18 tracks are included, though five have been substantially shortened -- "My Hometown" (by 24 seconds), "Glory Days" (by 29 seconds), "Human Touch" (by 82 seconds), "Better Days" (by 23 seconds), and "Streets of Philadelphia" (by 60 seconds). Third, like many artists, he is more interested in including his recent material than his older material, so there is nothing from Greetings from Asbury Park, N.J. or The Wild, the Innocent & the E Street Shuffle -- no "Blinded by the Light," "Spirit in the Night," "4th of July, Asbury Park (Sandy)," or "Rosalita (Come Out Tonight)" -- but both sides of his 1992 single "Human Touch"/"Better Days" are included. Fourth, he has not felt bound to interpret the album's title to mean he must include his most successful singles: the Top 40 hits "Prove It All Night" and "One Step Up" and the Top Tens "Cover Me," "I'm on Fire," "I'm Goin' Down," "War," and "Tunnel of Love" are left off, while the album tracks "Thunder Road," "The River," and "Atlantic City" and the minor chart single "Badlands" are included. Fifth, he has opted to include both a couple of new songs ("Secret Garden" and "Blood Brothers"), a previously unreleased outtake ("Murder Incorporated"), and a new recording of a previously unreleased old song ("This Hard Land"). All of which is to say that Greatest Hits is a hodgepodge. Springsteen considered calling it something other than Greatest Hits (one idea: This Hard Land), and that might have been a better idea if he was going to fiddle with the concept this much. Nevertheless, some of Springsteen's best and best-known hit recordings are here -- "Born to Run," "Hungry Heart," "Dancing in the Dark," "Born in the U.S.A.," and the then-recent "Streets of Philadelphia," the success of which probably prompted the release of this compilation in the first place.</p><p>— <strong>William Ruhlmann</strong></p> |
| Bruce Springsteen | Tracks | <p>For years, decades even, Bruce Springsteen was legendary for the amount of recordings he did not release. Every time he cut an album, he recorded a surplus of songs and left some out, not always on the basis of quality, but often because they simply didn't suit the mood of the record. It was inevitable that dedicated fans and collectors would bootleg these recordings, and for many years, he was one of the most popular bootlegged artists, rivaling even Bob Dylan. Dylan released a box set of unreleased songs in 1991, paving the way for the long-overdue appearance of a similar Springsteen set, Tracks, in 1998. Spanning four discs, it isn't entirely devoted to unreleased material -- a few B-sides pop up here and there -- nor is it truly definitive, since it misses a number of key outtakes, plus his original version of "Because the Night," the sole hit for Patti Smith. Instead, the compilation is an unassuming sampling of what's in the vaults, from his early acoustic demos to polished outtakes from Human Touch and Lucky Town. Along the way, there are a number of great songs -- "Bishop Danced" is every bit as terrific as its legend, as are "Thundercrack," "Give the Girl a Kiss," "Hearts of Stone," "Roulette," and many others. Tracks merely offers fans an enjoyably sequenced selection of what was left behind. If the end result isn't as revelatory as some may have expected (even the acoustic "Born in the U.S.A.," powerful as it is, doesn't sound any different than you may have imagined it), it's because Springsteen is, at heart, a solid craftsman, not a blinding visionary like Dylan. That's why Tracks is for the dedicated fan, where The Bootleg Series and The Basement Tapes are flat-out essential for rock fans.</p><p>— <strong>Stephen Thomas Erlewine</strong></p> |
| Bruce Springsteen | 18 Tracks | <p>18 Tracks is a single-disc distillation of 1998's four-CD box set Tracks, the superb retrospective assembling unreleased material spanning the breadth of Bruce Springsteen's storied career; also featuring three previously unissued songs, this new, streamlined release is a frustration from both a critical and consumer standpoint. The issue of record company greed aside, the greatest disservice is actually to those listeners who buy the disc as a substitute for the full Tracks box; each of its 66 cuts is an invaluable addition to the Springsteen songbook, so even casual fans need the complete package to discover lost classics like "Thundercrack," "Give the Girl a Kiss," "Wages of Sin," and "The Wish" — just 18 of these gems are simply not enough. Which means, then, that 18 Tracks is ultimately most essential for those hardcore fans who already shelled out for most of the material in question anyway; and though it's appalling to force the devoted to buy a full-length album for just three new songs, at least each is excellent, in particular longtime fan favorites "The Fever" and "The Promise" (the latter newly recorded for inclusion here).</p><p><b>— Jason Ankeny</b></p> |
| Bruce Springsteen | Live (SP) | |
| Bruce Springsteen | Live In New York City | <p>Compared to the gargantuan Live/1975-85, 2001's Live in New York City seems like the very definition of restraint, but consider this -- not only does it span two discs, it leaves out a considerable portion of the set list from the show and thereby the set list of Springsteen's celebrated 2000 reunion with the E Street Band. Some critics complained that this record was little more than a tie-in to the HBO special of the same name, but even if that's true, the record would have merit since it illustrates exactly why this group should never have parted ways. In a sense, even if this is the third live album in Springsteen's catalog, it's the first that attempts to replicate the feeling of an evening out with the E Street Band (the Live/1975-85 box tried too hard to be an ultimate experience; MTV Plugged captured a transitional phase). Though most reunions feel a little forced, this feels natural, yet never nostalgic, since the track listing never relies on the predictable. There are no hits in the conventional sense -- outside of "Born in the U.S.A." tucked away on the second disc and an initially uncredited "Born to Run" -- but there are many fan favorites interspersed with a few obscurities and new songs, most notoriously the protest song "American Skin (41 Shots)." This works in Springsteen's favor, since there's no pandering -- only the joy of making music with the band that understands him best. This doesn't really result in something essential, even if the new songs are quite good, but if you've ever been a fan, it's hard not to warm to Live in New York City.</p><p>—<strong>Stephen Thomas Erlewine</strong></p> |
| Bruce Springsteen | Live In New York City (DVD) | <p>Compared to the gargantuan Live/1975-85, 2001's Live in New York City seems like the very definition of restraint, but consider this -- not only does it span two discs, it leaves out a considerable portion of the set list from the show and thereby the set list of Springsteen's celebrated 2000 reunion with the E Street Band. Some critics complained that this record was little more than a tie-in to the HBO special of the same name, but even if that's true, the record would have merit since it illustrates exactly why this group should never have parted ways. In a sense, even if this is the third live album in Springsteen's catalog, it's the first that attempts to replicate the feeling of an evening out with the E Street Band (the Live/1975-85 box tried too hard to be an ultimate experience; MTV Plugged captured a transitional phase). Though most reunions feel a little forced, this feels natural, yet never nostalgic, since the track listing never relies on the predictable. There are no hits in the conventional sense -- outside of "Born in the U.S.A." tucked away on the second disc and an initially uncredited "Born to Run" -- but there are many fan favorites interspersed with a few obscurities and new songs, most notoriously the protest song "American Skin (41 Shots)." This works in Springsteen's favor, since there's no pandering -- only the joy of making music with the band that understands him best. This doesn't really result in something essential, even if the new songs are quite good, but if you've ever been a fan, it's hard not to warm to Live in New York City.</p><p>—<strong>Stephen Thomas Erlewine</strong></p> |
| Bruce Springsteen | The Rising | <p>The many voices that come out of the ether on Bruce Springsteen's The Rising all seem to have two things in common: the first is that they are writing from the other side, from the day after September 11, 2001, the day when life began anew, more uncertain than ever before. The other commonality that these voices share is the determination that life, however fraught with tragedy and confusion, is precious and should be lived as such. On this reunion with the E Street Band, Bruce Springsteen offers 15 meditations -- in grand rock & roll style -- on his own way of making sense of the senseless. The band is in fine form, though with Brendan O'Brien's uncanny production, they play with an urgency and rawness they've seldom shown. This may not have been the ideal occasion for a reunion after 15 years, but it's one they got, and they go for broke. The individual tracks offer various glimpses of loss, confusion, hope, faith, resolve, and a good will that can only be shown by those who have been tested by fire. The music and production is messy, greasy; a lot of the mixes bleed tracks onto one another, giving it a more homemade feel than any previous E Street Band outing. And yes, that's a very good thing.</p><p>The set opens with "Lonesome Day," a midtempo rocker with country-ish roots. Springsteen's protagonist admits to his or her shortcomings in caring for the now-absent beloved. But despite the grief and emptiness, there is a wisdom that emerges in questioning what remains: "Better ask questions before you shoot/Deceit and betrayal's bitter fruit/It's hard to swallow come time to pay/That taste on your tongue don't easily slip away/Let kingdom come/I'm gonna find my way/ Through this lonesome day." Brendan O'Brien's hurdy-gurdy cuts through the mix like a ghost, offering a view of an innocent past that has been forever canceled because it never was anyway; the instrument, like the glockenspiels that trim Bruce Springsteen's songs, offers not only texture, but a kind of formalist hint that possibilities don't always lie in the future. Lest anyone mistakenly perceive this recording as a somber evocation of loss and despair, it should also be stated that this is very much an E Street Band recording. Clarence Clemons is everywhere, and the R&B swing and slip of the days of yore is in the house -- especially on "Waitin' for a Sunny Day," "Countin' on a Miracle," "Mary's Place" (with a full horn section), and the souled-out "Let's Be Friends (Skin to Skin)." These tracks echo the past with their loose good-time feel, but "echo" is the key word. Brendan O'Brien's guitar-accented production offers us an E Street Band coming out of the ether and stepping in to fill a void. The songs themselves are, without exception, rooted in loss, but flower with the possibility of moving into what comes next, with a hard-won swagger and busted-up grace. They offer balance and a shifting perspective, as well as a depth that is often deceptive.</p><p>The title track is one of Springsteen's greatest songs. It is an anthem, but not in the sense you usually reference in regard to his work. This anthem is an invitation to share everything, to accept everything, to move through everything individually and together. Power-chorded guitars and pianos entwine in the choruses with a choir, and Clemons wails on a part with a stinging solo. With The Rising, Springsteen has found a way to be inclusive and instructive without giving up his particular vision as a songwriter, nor his considerable strength as a rock & roll artist. In fact, if anything, The Rising is one of the very best examples in recent history of how popular art can evoke a time period and all of its confusing and often contradictory notions, feelings, and impulses. There are tales of great suffering in The Rising to be sure, but there is joy, hope, and possibility, too. Above all, there is a celebration and reverence for everyday life. And if we need anything from rock & roll, it's that. It would be unfair to lay on Bruce Springsteen the responsibility of guiding people through the aftermath of a tragedy and getting on with the business of living, but rock & roll as impure, messy, and edifying as this helps.</p><p>— <strong>Thom Jurek</strong></p> |
| Bruce Springsteen | Live In Barcelona (DVD) | <p>In Barcelona is a full concert video DVD of a performance by Bruce Springsteen & the E Street Band of their Rising Tour performance of October 16, 2002 at Palau Sant Jordi in Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain.</p><p>The first half of the show was broadcast live at the time across Europe on MTV Europe and VH1 UK; the broadcast concluded with Springsteen's biggest hit, "Dancing in the Dark", unusually placed in the middle of the regular set for that reason. A tape of the broadcast was later aired by CBS in the United States on February 28, 2003 as well. The performance of "Waitin' on a Sunny Day" was released as a music video to promote the single.</p><p>Released on November 18, 2003 after the tour's conclusion and now incorporating the complete Barcelona performance, this DVD was the first time that an entire Springsteen concert was documented with an official release in either audio or video. Unlike the prior tour's concert video Bruce Springsteen & The E Street Band: Live in New York City, no equivalent audio-only album release was made.</p><p>— <strong>Wikipedia</strong></p> |
| Bruce Springsteen | The Essential | <p>In the liner notes to his volume of Columbia's Essential series, Bruce Springsteen immediately lays out the problem with hits collections: "In any body of work there are obvious high points. The rest depends on who's doing the listening. Where you were, when it was, who you were with when a particular song or album cut the deepest." All artists have this problem, but Springsteen has it more than most, since he not only has a deep and varied body of work, but he has a passionate, dedicated fan base. Within that following, there are listeners who prefer his big-hearted, sprawling early work, those who love the cinematic grandeur of Born to Run, those who love his stark, intimate acoustic ballads, and those who adore his pile-driving rockers. He's had hits in all of these styles, and he's had concert and album rock radio staples in all those styles -- all of these tunes for his basic canon, the "obvious high points" -- but he's such a strong songwriter and record-maker that this leaves behind songs that many other artists would be thrilled to call their best work, whether it's the epic street poetry of "It's Hard to Be a Saint in the City" or the old-time rock & roll throwaway of "Pink Cadillac." Neither of those tunes are on the double-disc, 30-track Essential Bruce Springsteen, but any two-disc set can't hold all of Springsteen's great songs. It can only offer a representative sampling, which means there will be lots of terrific tracks and fan favorites absent -- Springsteen admits this, citing "Growin' Up," "Racing in the Street," "Backstreets," and "My City of Ruins" as MIA, while others could make just as convincing an argument for "My Hometown," "Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out," "Fade Away," "I'm on Fire," "Prove It All Night," "Adam Raised a Cain," and the list goes on. The strength of The Essential is that you never notice these songs are missing. Unlike the previous Bruce compilation, the misguided, haphazardly selected Greatest Hits, The Essential contains all the big songs -- not just the obvious hits of "Hungry Heart," "Born to Run," "Born in the U.S.A.," and "Glory Days," but selections from his first two albums that were ignored completely the previous time out -- and it also contains just the right amount of latter-day material from the acclaimed The Rising, plus "American Skin (41 Shots)" and "Land of Hope and Dreams," two songs previously only available on Live in New York City. It adds up to an ideal introduction to Springsteen's music, capturing all sides of his musical output while being a hell of a good listen.</p><p>While the two main discs are for neophytes and casual fans, the third "bonus" disc is for the hardcore -- the kind of fans who will argue about the song selection on the previous two discs, and would be more interested in unreleased material than hits. This third disc is a clearing-house for items that should have made it to his previous rarities collection, Tracks, but didn't. This includes previously unreleased cuts, B-sides, contributions to soundtracks and benefit albums, covers, and an alternate, "country-blues" acoustic version of "Countin' on a Miracle" from The Rising. The disc follows a roughly chronological sequence and basically divides into early-'80s material and mid-'90s material. The '80s material has the edge due to the variety and strength of the material: the rampaging rocker "From Small Things (Big Things One Day Come)," a song Bruce gave to Dave Edmunds and has never released before now; the spare, tough "The Big Payback," a B-side; the searching "None but the Brave," cut during the Born in the U.S.A. sessions; the evocative "County Fair," cut after Nebraska; a cover of Jimmy Cliff's "Trapped," cut on the River tour; a wonderfully raucous live "Held Up Without a Gun," a variation on "You Can Look but You Better Not Touch" with topical lyrics previously released as a B-side. These are fantastic performances, and while there are also very good cuts of a more recent vintage -- such as the Joe Grushecky collaboration "Code of Silence," his title song from Tim Robbins' Dead Man Walking, and a fun version of "Viva Las Vegas" -- these '80s songs are the heart of the collection. It's an unexpected gift to have them officially released as a bonus disc to a hits collection, and for the hardcore, it's worth buying two discs of songs you already have just get these rarities. And it helps make The Essential Bruce Springsteen really live up to its title.</p><p>— <strong>Stephen Thomas Erlewine</strong></p><hr/><p>It's been a long time since Springsteen has been hip, if he ever was. His coolness was in question even back in the '70s, despite the grudging thumbs-up ("Springsteen is all right") Lou Reed gave him on the live album Take No Prisoners. The aging population that loves "real rock 'n' roll" are his biggest supporters, from rock critic turned producer/manager Jon Landau through biographer Dave Marsh and on down. If Springsteen partied with Warhol, the photos are rarely anthologized.</p><p>Springsteen is neither glamorous nor mysterious, but as this three-disc compilation demonstrates, he is an extremely talented and important artist. Assembled as part of Columbia's Essential repackaging of its signature artists, The Essential Bruce Springsteen is a fine introduction to his work and it atones for the shoddy 1995 compilation Greatest Hits (12 tracks are common to both). The previous Hits collection was both too brief, and poorly selected. The Essential stretches 30 of Springsteen's best-known songs over two discs and then adds a third of odds-and-ends.</p><p>Springsteen's career has been a series of attacks and retreats. He stormed out of the gate in 1973 on Greetings from Asbury Park as a word-drunk boho who spent as much time in Manhattan as he did on the Jersey shore. Manfred Mann and Greg Kihn made "Blinded by the Light" and "For You" into hits by omitting words, smoothing out Springsteen's chaotic phrasing and tightening the rhythm. The original versions here are loose and elastic as they come, with rubbery drumming by early E Streeter Vinnie Lopez that was the polar opposite of Max Weinberg's robotic thud. The race for the rock 'n' roll prize picked up steam later that year with The Wild, The Innocent, and the E Street Shuffle, but here, Springsteen traded some of the goofy Dylanesque wordplay of his debut for detailed, romantic character studies that borrowed from Van Morrison. When Tom Waits described Springsteen's songs from this period as "little black and white films," he was talking about material like "4th of July, Asbury Park (Sandy)". And there has never been a bar band rave-up quite like "Rosalita", which is structured like a suite without losing any of its whiteboy R&B; energy.</p><p>The final phase of Springsteen's early charge was the 1975 album Born to Run, where he openly stated that he was trying to make the greatest rock album of all time (later he clarified that what he was shooting for was Phil Spector producing Roy Orbison with words by Dylan). Songs like "Born to Run" and "Jungleland" are overblown to a degree that some find comical (here is the structural template for Meat Loaf's Bat Out of Hell). It's true, these songs swirl and build and jump from one discrete section to the next, and who now would try and get away with the line, "I wanna die with you, Wendy, on the street tonight in an everlasting kiss"? (Andrew WK, maybe.) This is rock mythology as gospel music, and there is no possible way to appreciate it other than to give yourself over to it completely.</p><p>Darkness on the Edge of Town from 1978 was the first retreat. Springsteen's lyrical focus darkened as his sound became leaner. This was the record in which Springsteen saw economy as a storytelling virtue, perhaps in emulation of fiction writers he admired like Flannery O'Connor. Unfortunately, Darkness is probably the album served most poorly by Essential. The omission of "Racing in the Street" is puzzling, considering that it's one of Springsteen's best ballads and also manages to turn the mythology of "Born to Run" completely on its head. "Candy's Room" is one of his best rock songs and should have replaced "Promised Land".</p><p>The two-disc album The River is difficult to pull from for an anthology. It was something of a summary of what Springsteen had done to that point, its upbeat frat-rock cuts alternating with country weepers. The Essential chooses "Hungry Heart" and "The River", one great song from each end of the spectrum. Obvious choices, certainly, but sensible. "Hungry Heart" was Springsteen's first Top 10 single and he followed that popularity by drawing inward and recording the solo acoustic Nebraska, the album that has certainly become the indie rock favorite in Springsteen's catalog. He was at home with the four-track years before it became an indie cliché, and he was writing stark, superbly focused songs that people have been covering ever since. "Nebraska" and "Atlantic City" are the two represented here, again completely obvious choices but ones that make the most sense for a Springsteen newcomer.</p><p>The second disc of The Essential picks up with "Born in the USA". At some point after Nebraska, Springsteen decided to kick his career back into high gear. His sound got huge, he became versed in the ways of MTV (though his videos were awful), and he basically lived in stadiums for a couple years. Born in the USA has little to recommend to an indie purist but listen to "Dancing in the Dark" and it's easy to hear why it was so popular: Springsteen's melodic gift was at its peak. The Essential adds "Glory Days", which I never liked (I would have swapped it for "I'm on Fire", the album's subtlest moment), and the title track, about which little remains to be said. It was ironic but the patriots loved (and love) it.</p><p>After the deluge of Born in the USA, Springsteen laid low for a good ten years to make quieter music and eventually raise a family. Tunnel of Love from 1987, recorded largely alone at his home studio, is Springsteen's most underrated album and certainly his last great one. The title track has the booming synth-pop sound of the preceding record, but Springsteen is painting with a finer brush and dealing with emotion in the abstract. "Brilliant Disguise" is perhaps Springsteen's finest lyric, a sharply observed mediation on vulnerability and self-doubt. The two albums Springsteen released in 1992 were the weakest of his career, and Essential rescues the titles cuts and "Living Proof" from the heap (though only "Human Touch" approaches the best of Tunnel of Love).</p><p>Springsteen peaked melodically in the early 80s, but he's compensated for his weaker tunes since by becoming a more skilled storyteller. The Ghost of Tom Joad has the stark sound and detail of some Nebraska songs, but the title track, represented here, lacks a tune that sounds like it has always existed. The events of 9/11 energized Springsteen, calling him back to the spotlight for his first record with the E Street band since Born in the USA. I like the melody of "The Rising", but it sounds an awful lot like Steve Miller's "Jet Airliner", and "Mary's Place" doesn't have nearly enough of a hook for a song about a party. As demonstrated on these songs and the live tribute to Amadou Diallo, "American Skin (41 Shots)", Springsteen addresses big contemporary topics with nuance, but it's tough to listen to songs repeatedly when you know they're connected with a single real-life event.</p><p>The bonus rarities disc is spotty but has awesome highs. It's great to finally have Springsteen's dynamic live cover of Jimmy Cliff's "Trapped" on CD, which was previously released only on the USA for Africa album (it was a radio staple in 1985). The slow, gentle "Lift Me Up", which Springsteen recorded for a John Sayles film, has an ungodly beautiful falsetto and perhaps Springsteen's best melody of the 90s. I could do without the cover of "Viva Las Vegas", however, and "Code of Silence" is a Springsteen rocker on autopilot. But that's why they're a bonus. The meat of this collection is enough to chew on for a lifetime. The two discs get the Springsteen story as right as is possible in 150 minutes, and if they don't work, then Springsteen is definitely not for you.</p><p>— <strong>Mark Richardson, Pitchfork</strong></p> |
| Bruce Springsteen | Devils & Dust | <p>Every decade or so, Bruce Springsteen releases a somber album of narrative songs, character sketches, and folk tunes -- records that play not like rock & roll, but rather as a collection of short stories. <i>Nebraska</i>, released in the fall of 1982 during the rise of Reagan's America, was the first of these, with the brooding <i>The Ghost of Tom Joad</i> following in 1995, in the thick of the Clinton administration but before the heady boom days of the late '90s. At the midpoint of George W. Bush's administration, Springsteen released <i>Devils & Dust</i>, another collection of story songs that would seem on the surface to be a companion to <i>Nebraska</i> and <i>Ghost</i>, but in actuality is quite a different record than either. While the characters that roam through <i>Devils & Dust</i> are similarly heartbroken, desperate, and downtrodden, they're far removed from the criminals and renegades of <i>Nebraska</i>, and the album doesn't have the political immediacy of <i>Ghost's</i> latter-day Woody Guthrie-styled tales -- themes that tied together those two albums. Here, the songs and stories are loosely connected. Several are set in the West, some are despairing, some have signs of hope, a couple are even sweet and light. Springsteen's writing is similarly varied, occasionally hearkening back to the spare, dusty prose of <i>Nebraska</i>, but often it's densely composed, assured, and evocative, written as if the songs were meant to be read aloud, not sung. But the key to <i>Devils & Dust</i>, and why it's his strongest record in a long time, is that the music is as vivid and varied as the words.</p><p>Unlike the meditative, monochromatic <i>The Ghost of Tom Joad</i>, this has different shades of color, so somber epics like "The Hitter" or the sad, lonely "Reno" are balanced by the lighter "Long Time Comin'," "Maria's Bed," and "All I'm Thinkin' About," while the moodier "Black Cowboys" and "Devils & Dust" are enhanced by subtly cinematic productions. It results in a record that's far removed in feel from the stark, haunting Nebraska, but on a song-for-song level, it's nearly as strong, since its stories linger in the imagination as long as the ones from that 1982 masterpiece (and they stick around longer than those from Ghost, as well). <i>Devils & Dust</i> is also concise and precisely constructed, two things the otherwise excellent 2002 comeback <i>The Rising</i> was not, and that sharp focus helps make this the leanest, artiest, and simply best Springsteen record in many years. [<i>Devils & Dust</i> was released only as a DualDisc, a disc that contains a CD on one side and a DVD on the flip. The DVD contains a 5.1 mix of the album, plus a 30-minute film containing interviews with Springsteen and footage of him performing five songs live in the upstairs of a house; in other words, it's a staged performance, not a concert. The interviews are enjoyable, if not particularly interesting, while the live acoustic performances are not strictly unadorned -- "Reno" has pianos and synthesizers discreetly murmuring in the background, "All I'm Thinkin' About" has synths and backing vocals. It's a fine little film, but not something that merits frequent repeat viewings. The CD side appears to be copy-protected -- it did not read in either a PC with Windows XP or a Mac with OSX, so it cannot easily be ripped as MP3s].</p>— <b>Stephen Thomas Erlewine</b> |
| Bruce Springsteen | We Shall Overcome - The Seeger Sessions | <p>We Shall Overcome: The Seeger Sessions is an unusual Bruce Springsteen album in a number of ways. First, it's the first covers album Springsteen has recorded in his three-decade career, which is a noteworthy event in itself, but that's not the only thing different about We Shall Overcome. Springsteen, a notorious perfectionist who has been known to tweak and rework albums numerous times before releasing them (or scrapping them, as the case may be), pulled together the album quickly, putting aside a planned second volume of the rarities collection Tracks after discovering a set of recordings he made in 1997 for a Pete Seeger tribute album called Where Have All the Flowers Gone: The Songs of Pete Seeger. Enthralled by this handful of tracks -- one of which, "We Shall Overcome," appeared on the tribute -- Springsteen decided to cut a whole album of folk tunes popularized by Pete Seeger. He rounded up 13 musicians, including some who played on those 1997 sessions, and did two one-day sessions in late 2005 and early 2006, swiftly releasing the resulting album that April. As Bruce stresses in his introductory liner notes, these were live recordings, done with no rehearsals, and We Shall Overcome does indeed have an unmistakably loose feel, and not just because you can hear the Boss call out chord changes in a handful of songs. This music is rowdy and rambling, as the group barrels head-first into songs that they're playing together as a band for the first time, and it's hard not to get swept up along in their excitement. Springsteen has made plenty of great records, but We Shall Overcome is unique in its sheer kinetic energy; he has never made a record that feels as alive as this.</p><p>Not only does We Shall Overcome feel different than Bruce's work; it also feels different than Seeger's music. Most of Seeger's recordings were spare and simple, featuring just him and his banjo; his most elaborately produced records were with the Weavers, whose recordings of the '50s did feature orchestration, yet that's a far cry from the big folk band that Springsteen uses here. Bruce's combo for the Seeger sessions has a careening, ramshackle feel that's equal parts early-'60s hootenanny and Bob Dylan and the Band's Americana; at times, its ragged human qualities also recall latter-day Tom Waits, although the music here is nowhere near as self-consciously arty as that. Springsteen has truly used Seeger's music as inspiration, using it as the starting point to take him someplace that is uniquely his own in sheer musical terms. Given that, it should be no great surprise that Bruce also picks through Seeger's songbook in a similar fashion, leaving many (if not most) of Pete's well-known songs behind in favor of a selection of folk standards Springsteen learned through Seeger's recordings. (Author/critic Dave Marsh researched the origins of each song here; there are brief introductions within the album's liner notes and thorough histories presented on the official Springsteen site.) While the songs featured here adhere to no one specific theme -- there are work songs, spirituals, narratives, and protest songs -- it is possible to see this collection of tunes as Springsteen's subtle commentary on the political state of America, especially given Seeger's reputation as an outspoken political activist, but this record should hardly be judged as merely an old-fashioned folk record. We Shall Overcome is many things, but a creaky relic is not one of them. Springsteen has drawn from Seeger's songbook -- which he assembled in the '40s, '50s, and '60s from traditional folk songs -- and turned it into something fresh and contemporary. And even if you have no patience for (or interest in) the history of the songs, or their possible meanings, it's easy to enjoy We Shall Overcome on pure musical terms: it's a rambunctious, freewheeling, positively joyous record unlike any other in Springsteen's admittedly rich catalog.</p><p>[We Shall Overcome: The Seeger Sessions was released in the U.S. as a DualDisc, containing a CD on one side and a DVD on the other. The CD side merely contains the album. The DVD contains the album in PCM stereo (there's no 5.1 mix, although given the big-band nature of this session, this album would have sounded great in Surround Sound), along with two bonus tracks, the rollicking "Buffalo Gals" and the moody, soulful "How Can I Keep from Singing." Both bonus cuts are excellent and should have been on the album proper. There is also a 30-minute video program that chronicles some of the recording of the album, but it's not a documentary: it's more of a performance film with commentary, and while it could have been longer or had more commentary, it's still quite enjoyable. Finally, We Shall Overcome also was released separately as a vinyl LP.]</p><p>— <strong>Stephen Thomas Erlewine</strong></p><hr/><p>On paper, The Seeger Sessions seems like a terrible idea: traditional American folksongs paid hyper-reverent homage by one of rock'n'roll's most earnest performers, an attempt to transform campfire songs into sermons and anoint sweet, old, cord-cutting Pete Seeger high priest of Americana. Instead, this collection—consisting of songs Seeger has sung, but none he's written—is a boisterous, spirit-raising throwdown, conjured by a 12-man band (guitar, harmonica, tuba, violin, B3 organ, upright bass, banjo, piano, drums, accordion, trombone, saxophone, trumpet, and more) and a pack of grinning backup singers. Perhaps ironically, Bruce Springsteen—one of America's most-adored songsmiths—is soaring high on a record full of tracks other people wrote.</p><p>On The Seeger Sessions, Springsteen growls, warbles, groans, and gags, sounding often like Tom Waits (check the scratchy, ominous vocals on "Erie Canal") or later Bob Dylan. It's a stark contrast to Seeger's crisp, clear pipes, and it reinvigorates a handful of ancient American tracks. Like any good folk record, The Seeger Sessions tackles the tangle of war, strife, poverty, and unrest, but does so without sacrificing joy or release (really, the very reasons people began singing in the first place). The resulting collection happily drowns out echoes of Springsteen's underwhelming recent efforts, and just might be the very best and most inspiring album Bruce has produced in more than a decade*.*</p><p>Embracing early E Street shuffle and ditching the solemnity of 2005's Devils and Dust, The Seeger Sessions culls from a century of rich, gritty Americana tradition, from bluegrass to country to rhythm and blues to gospel, rock'n'roll, Zydeco, Dixieland, and more. Springsteen is an obvious descendent of folk tradition, but, as he writes in the record's liner notes, this is "street corner music, parlor music, tavern music, wilderness music, circus music, church music, gutter music." Or: The Seeger Sessions is a party record.</p><p>Clawing through Seeger's considerable catalogue, Springsteen ultimately selected a smart, varied, and cohesive smattering of songs, proving he retains a deep and nuanced understanding of folk tradition. In a recent New Yorker profile of Seeger, Springsteen talks about folk songs as tools with potential to become "righteous implements when connected to historical consciousness," and claims to have chosen this particular repertoire because, "Everything I wanted, I found there." Appropriately, Spingsteen's voice seems custom-made for tracks like "We Shall Overcome", where his signature gravity spreads shivers, destined to silence even the most jaded listeners with its convincing optimism. Written in 1905, "Erie Canal" (sealed comfortably in the consciousness of any kid born or raised in western New York), is ominous and hypnotizing, with banjo picks punctuated by organs, strings, and an unexpected Dixieland breakdown midway through—it's not hard to imagine whole arenas shouting, "Low bridge, everybody down!"</p><p>The gorgeously explosive "O Mary Don't You Weep" cracks open with teasing fiddles, before horns and drums kick up and Springsteen's throaty shouts are rounded out by a bevy of backing singers, organs sliding in and out, a gloriously sloppy mélange of sound, as indebted to New Orleans as it is to Newport. Springteen's voice is gravelly and real, happily divorced from the overproduction and studio tweaking that plagues his recent work, and perfectly in sync with his band's raucous, gleeful pounding. Everyone here is loose and intoxicated, and nowhere else is the record's quasi-live conceit (the record was made in three day-long sessions, preceded by no rehearsals) as gloriously palpable.</p><p>Springsteen has a habit of folding current events into his songs without ever being specific enough to limit a verse to a single time and place. Unsurprisingly, that timelessness syncs up perfectly with the centuries-old songs on The Seeger Sessions, and, if nothing else, confirms that Bruce Springsteen was the right (and maybe only) person for this particular gig. Less an exhumation than a celebration, The Seeger Sessions is the best proof we've got that America's folksongs are also our finest artifacts. It's all here: recipes, prayers, promises, fears, hopes, and hollers.</p><p>— <strong>Amanda Petrusich, Pitchfork</strong></p> |
| Bruce Springsteen | Live In Dublin | <P>Live in Dublin by Bruce Springsteen with the Seeger Sessions band documents the final show of the group's long tour in support of the album that took them across the U.S. and Europe. Along with performances from the album itself, the show is peppered with Springsteen's own tunes. The deluxe double-CD contains 23 songs performed by a 17-piece band that includes a full horn section, backing chorus, numerous guitars, dobro, banjo, keyboards, accordion, field drums, sousaphone, euphonium, pedal steel, fiddles, standup bass, and more. The most prominently featured members of the band include Soozie Tyrell, Marc Anthony Thompson, and, of course, Patti Scialfa (who all offer wonderful duet performances). This recording stands in sharp contrast both musically and emotionally to the studio offering. We Shall Overcome: The Seeger Sessions was recorded by a band that captured immediacy and intimacy: there is a certain raw savoir faire resulting in a bristling kind of joyous energy that only a large group of musicians unfamiliar with one another can provide. Springsteen's a perfectionist; some of the rough edges left on the studio album are a welcome surprise. Here, many of those same songs — many of which come from out of history and time — are performed by a band that became a spit-shined, polished, and utterly professional unit.</P><P>Live in Dublin offers dazzling versions that have been honed and sharpened. This is a long way from Pete Seeger and his solitary banjo playing singalongs for folk festival audiences all over the globe; and yet, somehow not. But there is something more detached about this show — and the video doubly enhances that studied feeling — though its sheer musicality and virtuosity is a wonder. The horn charts are brilliant; there is room in some of these tunes, such as "Erie Canal," for old New Orleans jazz-styled soloing and interplay; the mannered time keeping is captured not only by drums and bass, but by the chorus' vocal phrasing. The show opener, "Atlantic City," is radically rearranged; it's now a near-monotone blues song. In this way it resembles the kind of re-tooling that Bob Dylan often gives his songs live to keep them interesting. Other tracks from Springsteen's catalog on the first disc include "If I Should Fall Behind." This one is done — at first — as a tender 19th century waltz between Scialfa and her husband. Then it transforms itself seamlessly into a communal sing, and in this way becomes a different song altogether, less intimate, but perhaps more profound. The pedal steel guitar treatment in "Highway Patrolman" is enhanced with upright piano, multiple acoustic guitars, and pedal steel. Springsteen's new version of Blind Alfred Reed's "How Can a Poor Man Stand Such Times and Live" premiered at the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival in 2006. It's complete with added lyrics that highlight the plight of Hurricane Katrina survivors; here it remains raucous and forceful. "O Mary Don't You Weep" is more fully a gospel tune here, its dynamic is over the top. "Jacob's Ladder" (a Seeger original) closes disc one.</P><P>It's a wild Dixieland cum gospel romp with full-on horns (including Sousaphone), popping field snare, and bass drum. Tyrell's great violin break — sometimes it seems as if she "gets it" in terms of the historical nature of these songs better than anyone else in this band — and wide ranging call and response chorale are a breathtaking finish. "Long Time Comin'" from Devils & Dust opens disc two, and this reading is a far more compelling one. Like "If I Should Fall Behind," it's so much bigger than the songwriter. It belongs not only in this mix, but in the way it's performed to the culture as shared experience. It's followed by an overly long, radical redo of "Open All Night." executed as a late-'50s rock & roll song with a very polished Andrews Sisters-styled female scat, before a male chorus engages them in call and response. It sounds more like something from Pump Boys at the Dinette , or, better yet, Guys and Dolls. It's a way of kickstarting a crowd for the second set; and no matter what one thinks of it musically, it works to that purpose. The Western swing (think Asleep at the Wheel) pedal steel solo and Sam Bardfeld's fiddle solo kick it into high gear, not to mention Springsteen's own acoustic guitar solo; and as has been proven thus far, the horn charts are spectacular. The accordion, fiddle, and brass driven "Pay Me My Money Down" is an entirely new reading of the traditional number. Its easy Cajun-esque 2-step and chorus-line-chorus structure is the loosest and most spontaneous-sounding thing on this entire set.</P><P>There are great surprises for anyone who didn't see this tour with the inclusion in the set list of both "Growin' Up" and "Blinded by the Light," from Springsteen's debut album (the latter is a bonus cut). The former begins as a solo acoustic tune with a new melody and becomes a string and horn driven, skittering country song. The latter, with a Latin rhythm, Cuban son structure, and minor key signature, is a new song entirely. In addition, Springsteen's inventive folk song treatment of "When the Saints Go Marching In" is here, as is the singalong gospel number "This Little Light of Mine." This, as the official close of the show, is a crowd-pleaser and a barnstormer. The chorus vocals are simply stunning. The band just burns as a unit, and for a moment or two, it feels as if the charts have been burned and they are on the wire without a net. Two other bonus tracks are included (they were recorded for the original Seeger Sessions offering but not included on the final CD). They are Live in Dublin takes of John Hurley's and Ronnie Wilkins' "Love of the Common People" and "We Shall Overcome." These feel like they add something to the sense of heritage that initially gave birth to the Seeger Sessions project. "We Shall Overcome" is a defining moment here. Introduced by Springsteen as: "This is the kinda the song that got us started here, so uh..."; it's a soft-spoken element of surprise that closes the entire release with a moving and even spiritual sense of dignity. It is also the only song here that doesn't feel like a number Springsteen has remade in his own musical image.For many listeners, this will seem like a wild celebration, yet all the polish and glimmer this band displays — perhaps unavoidable after such a long run playing together — feels very different, not distant so much involved in the song as in the performance. It feels like a recording that doesn't resemble the songs of the "people" any longer, but more like another live — and far more musically adventurous — Bruce Springsteen record. Not that there is anything wrong with that at all. It simply means that what was mercurial and puzzling and sometimes even maddening about The Seeger Sessions as an album feels defined and perhaps even actually finished here. Not just the in the sense of the band being at the end of a tour, either; it could be, perhaps, the end of a phase in his career (the jury is out on that for now), but more likely, that with Live in Dublin, something is lost as well as gained: it feels as if all of these songs as performed on this set — not just the ones Springsteen penned — have now become part of his catalog rather than part of his repertoire. While these songs have been part of a standard repertoire for many artists and front porch singers, they've never felt "owned" by anyone before now. Here, Springsteen owns them. [In addition to the double-CD version is a CD/DVD deluxe version that was filmed in high definition. Containing all 23 performances and a choice of Dolby Digital Surround or PCM sound, the bonus track performances are included as a separate chapter, along with a replica of the set list.]</P><P>— <B>Thom Jurek</B></P> |
| Bruce Springsteen | Magic | <p>Hailed as Bruce Springsteen's return to rock upon its release in fall 2007, Magic isn't quite as straightforward as that description would have it seem. True, this does mark another reunion with the E Street Band, only his second studio album with the group since 1984's Born in the U.S.A., giving this a rock & roll heft missing from his two previous albums —the dusty, literary Devils & Dust and the raucous We Shall Overcome: The Pete Seeger Sessions —and unlike The Rising, the first E Street Band album of the new millennium, there is no overarching theme here. It's just a collection of songs, something that Bruce hasn't done since Human Touch, or maybe even The River. All the ingredients are in place for a simple, straight-ahead rock album, except for two things: Springsteen didn't write a lot of flat-out rock songs, and with his producer Brendan O'Brien, he didn't make an album that sounds much like a rock & roll album, either. Magic is bright and punchy, a digital-age production through and through, right down to how each track feels as if it were crafted according to its own needs instead of the record as a whole.</p><p>Underneath this shiny veneer, the E Street Band can still lift this music toward great heights, infusing it with a sense of majesty, but this is an E Street Band that was recorded piecemeal in the studio, pasted together track by track as the group fit sessions into their busy schedules. This approach gives the album a bit of a mannered, meticulous sound not unlike The Rising, but such careful construction was appropriate for Springsteen's cautious, caring 9/11 rumination; on Magic it tends to keep the music from reaching full flight. Then again, the songs here don't quite lend themselves to either the transcendent sweep of Born to Run or the down-n-dirty roadhouse rockers that cluttered The River. There's a quiet melancholy underpinning this album. It's evident even on the hard-driving "Radio Nowhere," whose charging guitars mask a sense of desperation, or the deceptively breezy "Girls in Their Summer Clothes," which grows more wistful with each passing chorus. "Girls" is also indicative of how Magic doesn't quite feel like classic E Street Band, even when it offers reminders of their classic sound: like "Born to Run," it trades upon Phil Spector, but here the band doesn't absorb the Wall of Sound; they evoke it, giving the song a nostalgic bent that emphasizes the soft sadness in his melody. This oddly bittersweet vibe that is shared by "Your Own Worst Enemy," whose baroque harpsichords —uncannily reminiscent of the Left Banke —are the biggest curveball here.</p><p>That is, it's the biggest specific curveball outside of the overall feel of Magic, which is far too somber to be called just another rock & roll album. The solemn, sepia-toned picture of the Boss on the cover is a pretty big tip-off that there may not be a whole lot of good times coming on Magic, but it's a surprise that this is not only not as joyous as We Shall Overcome, it doesn't have as many moments of sunny relief as The Rising, which had "Waitin' on a Sunny Day" and "Mary's Place" among its quiet, artful grief. Here, the joy and the sadness are fused, skewing such otherwise lively numbers as "Livin' in the Future" —which otherwise sounds like it could sneak onto the second side of Born in the U.S.A. —toward the sober side. Springsteen also targets war and politics throughout the album, either through metaphors (the title track, where the audience is suckered by a con man) or blunt declarations ("Last to Die"). All this toil and tension doesn't make for a very fun album, but 2007 isn't a very fun time, so it's an appropriate reflection of the time. The thing of it is, despite some fine moments of craft —both musical and lyrical, whether on "Gypsy Biker" or "Long Walk Home" —the songs aren't written with the keen literary eye that made Devils & Dust play like a collection of short stories. Like the music, the words just feel a shade too deliberate, rendering Magic just a bit too overthought —hardly enough to make for a bad record, but one that isn't quite grabbing, even if it is helped immeasurably by the E Street Band in old pro mode. And what's missing comes into sharp relief as the album draws to a close with "Terry's Song," a quickly written and recorded tribute to Terry Magovern, Springsteen's longtime friend and assistant. Compared to the rest of the album, this simple tune is a bit ragged, but it's soulful, moving, and indelible, immediate where the rest of the album is a shade distant. After hearing it, it's hard not to wish that Bruce would record this way all the time.</p><p>— <strong>Stephen Thomas Erlewine</strong></p><p>Bruce Springsteen occupies a unique place in American popular culture. He doesn't have the cachet that Bob Dylan has, yet he's much more approachable—populist in practice, not just in theory. He has inspired pale imitators (Tom Petty, John Mellencamp), but has no peers to speak of. Unlike similar 1980s supercelebrities Prince or Madonna, he remains artistically viable and culturally relevant two decades after the height of his popularity. In the 1970s, he was never hip, but in the 2000s he has gained a considerable following among indie rock bands like the Hold Steady, the Killers, and the National, among many others. Because his music has lost none of its triumphant rock'n'roll kick—no matter how many times you hear it, "Born to Run" always kills—he has become today what Brian Wilson was 10 years ago: the indie ideal.</p><p>And yet, his popularity extends far beyond the indie realm. His mainstream audience remains fanatically loyal, making him one of the few artists that both you and your boss enjoy. Springsteen's success continues despite the constantly shifting ground that finds him on one side of certain cultural and political lines, then on another. His 2002 album The Rising was received as a post-9/11 salve, a paean to American resilience in the face of tragedy: The same people who died or lost loved ones in the attacks—cops, firefighters, corporate grunts, their wives, husbands, families—were said to be the very same people who inhabited Springsteen's earlier songs, now facing hard, cold reality. So it's forgivable if many heard the album they believed the country needed instead of the one Springsteen actually made.</p><p>Despite the nickname, the Boss has never inhabited his iconic status comfortably. Devils & Dust followed The Rising in 2005*,* trading the E Street Band's full sound for acoustic contemplation and spinning a much grimmer version of America that was full of unrealized dreams and insoluble injustices. We Shall Overcome, his album of Pete Seeger covers and his best late-career album, proved much subtler in its subversiveness, communicating an anti-establishment stance through decades-old tunes. That's nothing new for him: The E Street Band's enormous, exuberant rock'n'roll has always hidden darker currents of American realism, most famously on "Born in the U.S.A.", a song about disillusioned Vietnam vets that was hilariously co-opted by Ronald Reagan's 1984 presidential campaign as a theme song.</p><p>That's the secret power of Magic, Springsteen's 15th album in 34 years: The album hides its raw disillusionment deep within the music, mingling it with a weary optimism and a thoroughly committed lustiness that have not diminished with age. The result is a surprisingly complex album that recalls The River in its heartfelt populism, Darkness on the Edge of Town in its small-town scope, and Tunnel of Love in its mature take on love and sex. On "I'll Work for Your Love", which could be a cover of an outtake from the first half of The River, he tells a woman he's "counting the bones in your back like the stations of the cross"—a concise fusion of the sexual and the spiritual. Where he once chronicled youthful abandon in the face of life's possibility, now his subject is the wonders of middle-aged contentment, as if he can't believe his own luck. It's a surprisingly durable subject, one that fits his outsize sound perfectly.</p><p>On the other hand, Springsteen's prickly angst makes songs like "Last to Die" and "You'll Be Comin' Down" sound like challenges to, rather than platitudes for, regular Joes. On second single "Long Walk Home", he considers the small(-town) satisfaction of having distinctive local landmarks and knowing everyone you pass on the street. That such pleasures are slowly dying makes the song both a romanticizing ode to an American ideal that may never have existed as well as a clear-headed lament that we no longer yearn for those securities. "You know that flag flying over the courthouse means certain things are set in stone," he sings, "who we are, what we'll do and what we won't."</p><p>If Magic revisits the subject matter of previous career crests, it unfortunately recalls The Rising in its sound: Brendan O'Brien returns to the producer's seat, once again shuffling most of the E Street Band to the music's margins and focusing his attention squarely on the Boss. In addition to drenching slower songs like "Your Own Worst Enemy" and "Devil's Arcade" in melodramatic and totally unnecessary strings, the producer too often glosses over the creaks and wear in Springsteen's voice—like air-brushing a model's face to look younger—when it's the imperfections that give him his particular authority. Springsteen should sound more like Tom Waits, less like 3 Doors Down.</p><p>But then there are the songs that get everything exactly right, like the gorgeous "Girls in Their Summer Clothes" and "Livin' in the Future". On the latter, the E Street Band are given freer rein to revive and even update the boardwalk strut and namesake shuffle of their early days. Clarence Clemons' sax is integral to the modified doo-wop groove, drummer Max Weinberg swings easily, guitarists Steve Van Zandt and Nils Lofgren trade out licks, and Patti Scialfa's tender vocals echo Springsteen's excited performance. While he doesn't have the youthful eye for detail and narrative he once had, Springsteen's more concise songwriting style allows for some nice observations and surprisingly playful comparisons. "Then just about sundown, you come walkin' through town," he sings on "Livin' in the Future", "your boot heels clicking like the barrel of a pistol spinning 'round." He—and the E Street Band—actually sound hungry and, yes, just a little pissed off. It's an angry song, with a rumbling undercurrent of dread ("Woke up Election Day, sky's gunpowder and shades of gray"), but damn if it doesn't sound awesome when you're speeding down a back road with the windows rolled down.</p><p>— <strong>Stephen M. Deusner, Pitchfork</strong></p> |
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