Review: "Wrecking Ball" by Bruce Springsteen

The Working Man's Voice

By JIM FUSILLI
The Wall Street Journal
http://online.wsj.com/public/page/news-arts-movies-music.html
February 28, 2012

On his new album, "Wrecking Ball" (Columbia), out next week, Bruce Springsteen serves up the familiar with renewed vigor and vitality. The muscled-up music bridges Mr. Springsteen past and present with a jarring, authoritative blast under and around his voice. While the early industry buzz has homed in on his lyrics, Mr. Springsteen's rage and tempered optimism are expressed at least as well by the sound and arrangements he has whipped up with producer Ron Aniello.

Mr. Springsteen says the E Street Band, which has supported him since 1972, will form the core group backing him on his world tour beginning March 18 in Atlanta. "Wrecking Ball," however, doesn't feature the E Street Band, which suffered the deaths of original members Clarence Clemons last year and Danny Federici in 2008. Singer-guitarist Patti Scialfa and drummer Max Weinberg are the only surviving E Street Band members on this disc; Mr. Weinberg appears on two cuts, including the title track, which the E Street Band performed with Mr. Springsteen beginning in 2008. Clemons's most notable contribution is a characteristically brawny solo on "Land of Hope and Dreams."

But this isn't the first time Mr. Springsteen has worked with a different cast. Here Messrs. Springsteen and Aniello play most of the guitars and other stringed instruments, keyboards and percussion. Their roaring guitar chords, dense synth lines and acoustic and electronic percussion give the music an appealing thickness. A loose-limbed horn section adds to the clamor on five tracks; soaring gospel voices and chanting singers join in, and the New York Chamber Consort's strings add a feathery touch. Violinist Soozie Tyrell, a key Springsteen contributor for more than a decade, enriches several country- and gospel-flavored cuts. Instrumental solo duties are turned over to guitarists Tom Morello and Marc Muller, whose pedal-steel work on the folk blues "You've Got It" lifts the track. Mr. Aniello, mixer Bob Clearmountain and various engineers help make sense of the music, surrendering none of the clarity heard on Mr. Springsteen's recent recordings while calling to mind his rock albums with the E Street Band and linking them to his long-standing passion for an Americana mix of folk, country and gospel.

As a lyricist, Mr. Springsteen has long embraced a populist view, and on "Wrecking Ball" the financial community is the enemy elite. "The banker man grows fat / Working man grows thin / It's all happened before and it'll happen again," he sings in the piano ballad "Jack of All Trades" after Curt Ramm's boozy, baleful trumpet solo. "Gambling man rolls the dice / Working man pays the bill / It's still fat and easy up on banker's hill" is a verse in "Shackled and Drawn." Though the pounding title song is told from the point of view of New Jersey's Giants Stadium as it was about to be torn down, it can be taken as metaphor for something perfectly functional that's cast aside when the work is done.

In the opening track, "We Take Care of Our Own," Mr. Springsteen declares that Americans have been failed by their institutions, but the song isn't an antigovernment screed. Rather, it is apathy that he opposes. "I been stumbling on good hearts turned to stone," he sings, then asks, "Where're the hearts that run over with mercy?" But Mr. Springsteen believes in his countrymen: "Wherever this flag's flown / We take care of our own."

It's a theme that reverberates throughout the album. For all his despair at the state of the world, Mr. Springsteen doesn't lose faith. In the gospel rock tune "Rocky Ground," which features processed percussion, a church organ and a rap interlude, he sings, "Jesus said the money changers in this temple will not stand / Find your flock, get them to higher ground." The album concludes with a rousing "We Are Alive" in which he declares: "Our souls and spirits rise to carry the fire and light the spark to fight shoulder to shoulder and heart to heart."

Throughout the album, Mr. Springsteen is in a feisty mood. Anger and hope reside side by side in his words and voice, and his energy is a palpable presence. Occasionally, his criticisms aimed at institutional foes tread into well-worn territory and cliché. But for its urgency, the breadth of the music performed admirably by the ad-hoc group of musicians, and how Mr. Springsteen is determined to inspire brotherhood with what he perceives as traditional American and Christian ideals, "Wrecking Ball" is a triumph.

Mr. Fusilli is the Journal's rock and pop music critic. Email him at jfusilli@wsj.com or follow him on Twitter: @wsjrock.