Jeff Spevak • Staff music critic • January 20, 2009
Rochester Democrat and Chronicle
http://www.democratandchronicle.com/
Working on a Dream by Bruce Springsteen won't be out for another week, yet few musicians have ever found themselves in the right place, in the right time, so often.A week ago, he won a Golden Globe for one song on the record, "The Wrestler," which plays over the closing credits of the acclaimed Mickey Rourke film. When the album debuts next Tuesday, "My Lucky Day" will be released to radio as a single and will be on a new version of the video game Guitar Hero World Tour, alongside Springsteen's classic guitar-rebel anthem "Born to Run." The following week, he plays halftime at the Super Bowl; then the week after that, he has two nominations for consideration at the Grammy Awards.
But in what he may consider the biggest win of his artistic career, considering how hard he's fought for change in the past two presidential elections, Springsteen is a vital piece in the soundtrack for the history that's happening today in Washington, D.C., with several appearances — including Sunday's "We Are One" all-star concert at the Lincoln Memorial — at the inauguration of Barack Obama.
Springsteen's political involvement is often subtle. On tour, he generally names local humanitarian charities to benefit from the show. When Springsteen was at the Blue Cross Arena in March, he picked Foodlink and Rochester Roots, a group that promotes urban gardens. On the national stage, Springsteen campaigned for John Kerry in 2004. Kerry lost, but Springsteen came out of the experience with one superb song. "Last to Die" evoked Kerry's testimony as a Vietnam soldier before Congress, and applied it to Iraq: "Who'll be the last to die for a mistake?" He campaigned just as diligently for Obama last year, and came out of the experience with an album's worth of attitude.
That attitude, as reflected throughout Working on a Dream, is hope. Sometimes wistful, sometimes hidden, sometimes confident, but always irrepressible. Exuberant, even in the dark. "I'm working on a dream, though it can feel so far away," he sings. Yet amid the painterly detail, worldly observation, gruffness of voice, raw blues, lush strings and chiming guitar beauty that is Working on a Dream, one sound may come to define Bruce Springsteen's new album: the happy-go-lucky whistle on the title track. Like a man hard at work at a task that he knows he will successfully accomplish.
This upbeat frame of mind was evident last year as Springsteen toured in support of his previous album, Magic. At his Blue Cross Arena show, sadness and cynicism heard on songs like "Last to Die" and "Magic" — which Springsteen dedicated to an end to seven years of illusion by the Bush administration — was eclipsed by the shining, upbeat qualities of "The Promised Land," "Waitin' on a Sunny Day" and "Livin' in the Future," introducing that final one with a subtle nod to Obama: "I feel a new wind out there!"
True, it's been a long campaign. So thankfully, there's not one political comment to be heard on Working on a Dream, unless you're willing to spin a line from the opening track, the hallucinogenic eight-minute-western epic "Outlaw Pete," in which a dying man whispers in Pete's ear, "We cannot undo these things we've done."
Each piece cries out for its own detail. To that end, there are songs here unlike any other Springsteen song. "Outlaw Pete," for sure. Its lush strings, chiming guitar and what sounds like a sanctuary-filling pump organ contrast with the rough-hewn Western tale, harmonica wail and Springsteen's gruff voice, sometimes soaring imploringly, "Can you hear me?"
Bruce Springsteen (R) holds his Golden Globe award for Best Song 'The Wrestler' in the film 'The Wrestler' with Mickey Rourke, holding his award for Best Performance by an Actor in a Motion Picture - Drama for 'The Wrestler', at the 66th annual Golden Globe awards in Beverly Hills, California January 11, 2009.(Lucy Nicholson/Reuters)
Working on a Dream is both the hugeness of rock and roll, and the intimacy. Lines like "My jacket around your shoulders, the falling leaves," from "Kingdom of Days." Accompanied only by acoustic guitar, the bonus track "The Wrestler" is less a nod to the movie than the tragic-comedy of a man sensing his own decline. "Have you ever seen a scarecrow filled with nuthin' but dust and weeds? If you've ever seen that scarecrow, then you've seen me."
So many elements Springsteen taps into are the same qualities I admire in other artists. Springsteen explores the roots of rock, but not Woody Guthrie's roots. This is newer growth. Songs like "This Life," "Kingdom of Days" and "Surprise Surprise" share the soaring, Left Banke quality of Magic's finest moment, "Girls in Their Summer Clothes." The raw, distorted electric blues, with clattering banjo, whoops and harmonica of "Good Eye" will feel familiar to fans of the late R.L. Burnside and the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion. Poetic philosophy distilled to brilliant lasers on "Life Itself" — "Why do the things that we treasure most, slip away in time, till to the music we grow deaf, to God's beauty blind" — seems like something from Bruce Cockburn.
Yet Springsteen's largest talent as a songwriter remains his Everyman's eye. "There's a wonderful world where all you desire, and everything you've longed for is at your fingertips," he sings. Springsteen is referring to, of course, the grocery store. "Though a company cap covers her hair, nothing can hide the beauty waiting there," he says of "The Queen of the Supermarket."
A fantasy glance of romance exchanged with the mystery woman who scans his vegetables at the check-out counter. Who knew the end of the line at Wegmans holds such potential? How sad it is that Barack Obama, who will likely not be buying any of his groceries for at least the next four years, will not experience this kind of fleeting, yet cloaked euphoria that brings Springsteen — pushing his shopping cart — to unload an f-bomb of exuberance in the parking lot.
JSPEVAK@DemocratandChronicle.com
Springsteen's ‘Dream’ world
By Jeff Miers
THE BUFFALO NEWS POP MUSIC CRITIC
Updated: 01/20/09 03:08 PM
http://www.buffalonews.com/
Once again working with producer Brendan O’Brien (“Magic,” “Devils & Dust” and “The Rising”), Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band craft gorgeous pop arrangements on “Working on a Dream.”Bill Wippert / Buffalo News file photo
With 2007’s “Magic,” Bruce Springsteen offered his darkest album this side of the folk-noir 1982 masterpiece “Nebraska.”
That earlier record took as its thematic material the dissolution of community and the gap between the haves and the have-nots, one which was rapidly turning into a canyon during Ronald Reagan’s watch. “Nebraska” was disturbingly intimate, and its characters spoke in the language of ghosts.
“Magic” traded “Nebraska’s” tremor of alienation for a howl of righteous anger. The record offered a final word on the Bush administration, feeling no need to wait for history to determine the legacy of the 43rd president. The acoustic “Nebraska” sketched in blood a portrait of one American man come untethered from all that might redeem him; “Magic” engaged the broad, bold E Street Band sound in order to suggest that the entire country had lost its moral and spiritual epicenter.
Together, “Nebraska” and “Magic” ably bookend the birth and growth of Springsteen’s political and social songwriting conscience, and reveal his own conception of American literature and song.
“Working on a Dream,” out next Tuesday, is not as existentially bleak as “Nebraska,” nor as viscerally disgusted as “Magic.” It is a far more subtle work of art than both, on the lyrical front. It’s also the most intricate, musical and lushly arranged album of Springsteen’s career. For perhaps the first time in the 36 years Springsteen has been releasing albums, the melodies are more important than the lyrics.
That’s not to suggest that “Dream” is light on the text. Far from it, in fact; these lyrics are at once familiar in their imagery, and surprising in their ability to breathe new life into the notion of what constitutes a “love song.”
“Working on a Dream” is a celebration of Springsteen’s love for the sort of pop melodies that informed Roy Orbison’s finest work, rode the highest waves throughout Brian Wilson’s mini-symphonies, and lent a romantic grandeur and sense of mystery to the most magical of Elvis Presley’s recordings.
A tall order indeed, particularly when one considers that Springsteen is making pop music that refuses to assume the listener is a moron. That’s as rare and beautiful a thing these days as crisp, clean air. “Dream” is a pop pleasure delivered sans guilt.
If R. E. M. hadn’t already used it, “Reckoning” would have been an apt title for “Dream.” It is an album of songs about dealing with the past, which in Springsteen lore, is never actually the past at all, but an ever-present challenge to be surmounted daily. This is not a new theme for him, but the manner in which he deals with it here — sparsely, economically, with a simple poetry — feels new. As has been the case with all of Springsteen’s greatest work, personal and individual concerns mirror events of a universal nature throughout “Dream.”
A smooth ride
The record begins with its biggest challenge, the epic rock-Western “Outlaw Pete,” an eight-plus minute mini-novel that echoes John Ford, Cormac McCarthy and Ennio Morricone in equal measure.
“Pete” is as far as “Dream” will venture from transcendent pop music. It’s knotty and grandiose, part American tall tale, part dark fable. Musically, its forbears are found in pre-“Born to Run” Bruce pieces, a la “Mary Queen of Arkansas” or “Incident on 57th Street,” although its closest relative is the noir-Western “Gypsy Biker,” one of “Magic’s” most intense songs. Here, the characters wrestle with who they are, try to outrun their pasts, and predictably, are unable to do so. Their fatal flaw? A failure to take reckoning of their own pasts. You see where this is going: Springsteen is suggesting that, even as it faces a new dawn, America needs to come clean with itself about who and what it is if it wants to avoid repeating the mistakes of the past. Part of “Outlaw Pete’s” magic can be attributed to its multiple levels of suggestion. One can ignore the deeper implications if one wishes, and the song still works. That is a tough gig for a songwriter.
From there on out, “Dream” is a smooth ride, at least on the surface. Once again working with producer Brendan O’Brien, who helmed “Magic,” “Devils & Dust” and “The Rising,” Springsteen and the E Street Band craft gorgeous, billowing, orchestral pop arrangements, ones that reward repeated close listenings. The music breathes easily and moves gracefully, without a wasted note, yearning vocal harmonies echoing Byrds, Beach Boys and Turtles alike, but Orbison’s heartbreaking pop-opera most of all.
It rocks, too, particularly “My Lucky Day,” a “River”-style throwdown that is pure grandiose garage rock. Later, the swampy blues strut “Good Eye” echoes John Lee Hooker, and was most likely born from the radically rearranged take on “Reason to Believe” Springsteen and the band performed throughout the “Magic” tour. These songs are smartly placed in the running order, providing stirring contrast to the harmony-laden brilliance of their housemates.
The other siblings are the ones that deserve most of our attention, however, and they’re quite the little family. “Queen of the Supermarket” is constructed around a lilting Roy Bittan piano figure, but builds and builds toward symphonic bliss, with Springsteen’s lead vocal gaining intensity as guitars, keyboards, percussion, harmony vocals and a stirring string arrangement swirl around it. All of this leads to an operatic crescendo, Springsteen nailing high notes that might surprise some who’ve pegged him as merely a gruff growler or mush-mouthed folkie. The song then drifts away in a cloud of strings and backward sound effects in waltz time, like the tail of a “White Album”-era Beatles song.
The big payoff
“This Life” begins as a straight-up “Pet Sounds” tribute, but soon presents one of the most killer melodies in the Springsteen canon. Again, the arrangement is richly detailed. “Tomorrow Never Knows” is a country-folk shuffle with poignant lyrics on life and loss, and is probably the most “traditionally Springsteen” bit on the album — although again, the arrangement is incredibly detailed and the instrumentation delightfully unexpected.
“Kingdom of Days” is the one, though, the big payoff. It’s the most compelling love song Springsteen has written, and man, he’s written a few beauties. This one, though, floats atop a transcendent melody, and takes as its subject a love that endures, even as the physical beings that are vehicles for that love begin to wither and fade. It’s lump-in-your-throat sublime.
It would have been unfair to expect an album as stunning as “Working on a Dream” to come so quickly on the heels of the equally wonderful “Magic.” Springsteen, after all, has never worked particularly quickly, at least from the outsider’s perspective, and he made “Dream” in between dates on the two-year “Magic” tour. By rights, this thing should sound rushed and thrown together.
And yet, here it is, another true gem. Surprise, surprise.
CD Review
Bruce Springsteen
Working on a Dream
[Columbia]
★★★★
(Out of four)
jmiers@buffnews.com
Springsteen's 'Dream' awakens a happier Boss
By Danny Clinch
Bruce Springsteen's latest album, Working on a Dream, arrives in stores on Tuesday.
By Edna Gundersen, USA TODAY
January 21, 2009
Forget about chrome-wheeled, fuel-injected joy rides on Highway 9. "Queen of the Supermarket" finds Bruce Springsteen steering a grocery cart down aisle No. 2 as he plaintively confesses his secret crush on the checkout girl.
The song conveys the wistful and uplifting tones that permeate Working on a Dream, on sale Tuesday and streaming this week at NPR.org/music.
Whereas 2007's Magic bore notes of fear, frustration and political disenchantment, the Springsteen on Working (* * * out of four) is more personal, romantic and relaxed. Given his increasingly visible campaign involvement and social activism, Springsteen's retreat from the soapbox at this pivotal moment in history may strike many as curious. And yet, what better time to express hope and a renewed fervor for long-cherished values?
The whistling in the rocking title track, which could be an anthem for President Obama's stimulus package, conveys cheery optimism at the prospect of honest hard labor, even as the lyrics recognize hardships ahead.
Produced and mixed by Brendan O'Brien, Working was hatched before Magic was launched. While mixing the latter, Springsteen recorded "What Love Can Do", which he deemed more appropriate for a new path than a last-minute Magic addition. It sparked an atypical songwriting frenzy that yielded five Working tracks in a week. The E Street Band did much of the recording during tour breaks. The album contains the last studio contributions by keyboardist Danny Federici, who died of melanoma last April.
Working's luminous melodies, bold strokes and lush textures owe a debt to early pop and '60s rock 'n' roll, particularly The Byrds and Roy Orbison. Unfortunately, Springsteen's street poetry falls short of earlier majestic peaks, robbing splendor from sonic gem "Surprise, Surprise" and depriving "Queen" of authority.
The voice is pure Springsteen: robust, heartfelt, ripe with wisdom, experience and humility. Whether he's celebrating love's blessing in "My Lucky Day:, plumbing its darker depths in "Life Itself" or spinning the seriocomic folk tale of "Outlaw Pete", Springsteen makes Working a pleasure.
>Download: The Last Carnival, Working on a Dream, Life Itself, The Wrestler, Outlaw Pete
>Consider: My Lucky Day
>Skip: Kingdom of Days, Surprise, Surprise
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