Home News Tribune Online 09/30/07
East Brunswick, NJ
By KELLY-JANE COTTER
GANNETT NEW JERSEY
Bruce Springsteen on the set of the "Today" show (9/28).
"Magic," Bruce Springsteen's new album with the E Street Band, sparkles with melody, energy and a reverence for the power of a good hook.
Like all good pop music, the songs on "Magic" lure you in with the sheer hummability of a chorus and the irresistible pull of a beat.
"I just want to hear some rhythm," Springsteen calls out in "Radio Nowhere," the first single.
So do the rest of us.
"Radio Nowhere" works it, opening the album with the scratchy drag of guitars — Springsteen, Steven Van Zandt and Nils Lofgren all doing their part — and the incessant pounding of Max Weinberg's drums.
It's both retro and modern; speed it up and it could almost be punk.
Within that brash melody, there lies the hungry heart we know so well: "Is there anybody alive out there?" This is a song about alienation and the yearning for communion. It's less cynical and bored than "57 Channels (And Nothin' On)." If you're "searchin' for a mystery train," then you know your rock 'n' roll history, and you know that the music and all that goes with it, is still out there somewhere.
"Magic" rolls from there into the bitter and beautiful "You'll Be Comin' Down," a restrained tell-off song that conjures some of the indecipherable imagery of early Springsteen ("Your cinnamon sky's gone candy-apple green/The crushed metal of your little flying machine") yet gets its point across anyway. Springsteen's voice is high, and the chorus is deceptively sweet.
Bruce Springsteen, Patti Scialfa and Steve Van Zandt on the "Today" show (9/28).
So much of "Magic" is shimmering and confident, especially the glorious "Girls in Their Summer Clothes." It is one of several tracks that prominently feature the evocative organ and keyboards of Roy Bittan and Danny Federici. The title alone tells you much — "Girls in Their Summer Clothes" is both wistful and languid, with subtle imagery about the season. The lonely hero of the song breaks your heart with his optimism and his unflinching observations: "The girls in their summer clothes, in the cool of the evening light/The girls in their summer clothes, pass me by."
"I'll Work for Your Love" features one of Springsteen's archetypal heroines — Theresa, who represents salvation. A mid-tempo rock song with an elegant melody, "I'll Work for Your Love" showcases Soozie Tyrell's violin. The song also shows off Springsteen's lovely singing voice, rather than the mumbles and growls he often employs.
About half the album is built from meaty songs that deal with the state of things today. To say that "Magic" is a political album is unnecessary because all of Springsteen's work is "political." Perhaps the difference on "Magic" is the note of despair in some of these songs.
Think back to "The Rising," an album created in grief, before the dust of the Twin Towers had yet to settle. Those were songs of sorrow, but also of solidarity, and there was a sense that the nation, as a whole, would draw upon its inner strength and would recover from 9/11.
Now, Springsteen doesn't seem so sure.
"Long Walk Home" indicates that the United States has much work to do, and to un-do, before it can reclaim its ideals. A jangly melody contrasts with lyrics of disillusionment. This song serves as a companion piece to "My Hometown," with a father once more taking his son around the
neighborhood.
"Livin' in the Future" finds the narrator in a nightmare of government betrayal that can't possibly be real: "Now baby don't you fret, we're livin' in the future and none of this has happened yet."
Ah, but it has: "My faith's been torn asunder, tell me is that rollin' thunder, or just the sinkin' sound of somethin' righteous goin' under?"
And all the while, Clarence Clemons blows a merry saxophone, and the band sings "sha, la, la, la." What a creepy, catchy song.
"Magic," the song, dispels any notion that "Magic," the album, could be about sunshine and lollipops. "Magic" sounds like a dark nursery rhyme, complete with gruesome imagery: "There's bodies hangin' in the trees; This is what will be, this is what will be." "Magic" is about political chicanery, the kind of deception that has devastating consequences.
"Last to Die" is a rocker with a desperate chorus — "Who'll be the last to die for a mistake" — that clearly takes aim at the Bush administration and the Iraq war. The guitars sound besieged; the rhythm section beats out a tempo of panic.
Throughout "Magic," the production of Brendan O'Brien shines. The members of the E Street Band, which also includes bassist Garry Tallent and guitarist/singer Patti Scialfa, and the many backing musicians laid down their tracks individually in the studio. O'Brien's production helped create a coherent whole, with a sound that is contemporary and fresh.
"Magic" ends with a hidden 12th track, known as "Terry's Song," which Springsteen recorded after the July 30 death of his longtime friend and associate, Terry Magovern. The acoustic song bristles with pain and love: "They say you can't take it with you, but I think that they're wrong, because all I know is I woke up this morning and something big was gone. Gone upto that dark ether where you're still young and hard and cold, just like when they built you, brother, they broke the mold."
Springsteen has recorded a bracing album, full of life, even when it deals with death.
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