My first Springsteen Album was The Rising. Then, for $10 bucks a few years later, I elected to go with a 4-disc Best of collection. Then I got Devils and Dust. Then The Ghost of Tom Joad, Nebraska, The Seeger Sessions and Magic. Finally: Working on a Dream. I'm a relatively late comer to Springsteen. So much so that for me to even claim The Rising is his best album might get me shot. 41 times too.
I liked Magic. Not at first. Not for a number of listens. And not for the reasons of it being overtly political. I know it is. But it doesn't sound political to me. Not when I listen to it. I'm a sucker for good lyrics I guess. But Magic grew on me. So much so that I get extremely sad when I hear Long Walk Home. Mainly because if you juxtapose that with the grandeur and excellence of Thunder Road, you hear the voice of a musician who's done with the speed, cars and pace of life. Who's set to talk that slow, deep greens of summer walk into the night. It was a great final song for what was to be a final album (not including the tributary Terry's song as a hidden track). It summed it up.
Then I hear word of a new album. And I get excited. Maybe we're stopping to smell the roses on that walk home. Maybe we want to get carried home by a little bit of a breeze. But then Working on a Dream comes out. And I don't like it. And I'm one of a very few who don't.
Gone, most notably, are the Walt Whitman working man dirges backed by the greatest band in the world. Replaced with effervescent lyricism that only works to Bruce's strength when it's just him and his guitar and only then hidden in a story. With the backing depth of the E-Street Band he needs nitty-gritty lyrics. And this album doesn't have that. Too much attention to lyric bridges and chorus' that repeat. Springsteen, in a band setting that echos deeply of rambling instruments, needs to ramble. When he doesn't, everything gets held back. And so I don't like the album.
Working on a Dream and My Lucky Day are cool songs. I like them. But I expect more than a pop music number from Bruce churned out to satisfy that radio hit. Much, much more. I expect unbalanced, rambling poetry. Stories set to music. Almost psalmic in nature. What Working on a Dream is is a manufactured, forced work that, while great because the artists are great, fails to reach the level we'd expect. Except for one thing...
I can't dance. At least not well. But I can hear rhythm. One time, at a dance lesson, the instructor, waiting a half-step for me to begin my role of leading, stopped me after the dance. She said I was one of only a few people she had met who danced to a singular, backing, un-obvious beat of the music. I've thought long about that. How to explain what maybe that means. Music is a lot like math. If a song has a beat. A number of beats per measure. The beats that people dance to. Then maybe what I listen for and hear so vividly is the factor that goes into making that number.
Explaining all that my point is this: on the album, maybe Queen of the Supermarket is the key. The legend. The factor. It embodies the old Whitman rambling poet style with a tinge of maturity and profundity. It has some weird, almost off-putting musical interludes. And the lyrical line delivered with the quiet intensity of beginning a rise to crescendo. This song maybe is the beat to which the rest of the album is to be understood. But even still, I won't like this more than Magic.
And certainly not more than the all-encompassing energy and transcendence of The Rising. And as I talk the long walk home staring into a sky of memory and shadow, I keep finding myself returning to Thunder Road, Rosalita, Sandy, Born to Run, Jungleland. And when I get there...home.... to a place of quiet... then give me any of Bruce's solo stuff.
I liked Magic. Not at first. Not for a number of listens. And not for the reasons of it being overtly political. I know it is. But it doesn't sound political to me. Not when I listen to it. I'm a sucker for good lyrics I guess. But Magic grew on me. So much so that I get extremely sad when I hear Long Walk Home. Mainly because if you juxtapose that with the grandeur and excellence of Thunder Road, you hear the voice of a musician who's done with the speed, cars and pace of life. Who's set to talk that slow, deep greens of summer walk into the night. It was a great final song for what was to be a final album (not including the tributary Terry's song as a hidden track). It summed it up.
Then I hear word of a new album. And I get excited. Maybe we're stopping to smell the roses on that walk home. Maybe we want to get carried home by a little bit of a breeze. But then Working on a Dream comes out. And I don't like it. And I'm one of a very few who don't.
Gone, most notably, are the Walt Whitman working man dirges backed by the greatest band in the world. Replaced with effervescent lyricism that only works to Bruce's strength when it's just him and his guitar and only then hidden in a story. With the backing depth of the E-Street Band he needs nitty-gritty lyrics. And this album doesn't have that. Too much attention to lyric bridges and chorus' that repeat. Springsteen, in a band setting that echos deeply of rambling instruments, needs to ramble. When he doesn't, everything gets held back. And so I don't like the album.
Working on a Dream and My Lucky Day are cool songs. I like them. But I expect more than a pop music number from Bruce churned out to satisfy that radio hit. Much, much more. I expect unbalanced, rambling poetry. Stories set to music. Almost psalmic in nature. What Working on a Dream is is a manufactured, forced work that, while great because the artists are great, fails to reach the level we'd expect. Except for one thing...
I can't dance. At least not well. But I can hear rhythm. One time, at a dance lesson, the instructor, waiting a half-step for me to begin my role of leading, stopped me after the dance. She said I was one of only a few people she had met who danced to a singular, backing, un-obvious beat of the music. I've thought long about that. How to explain what maybe that means. Music is a lot like math. If a song has a beat. A number of beats per measure. The beats that people dance to. Then maybe what I listen for and hear so vividly is the factor that goes into making that number.
Explaining all that my point is this: on the album, maybe Queen of the Supermarket is the key. The legend. The factor. It embodies the old Whitman rambling poet style with a tinge of maturity and profundity. It has some weird, almost off-putting musical interludes. And the lyrical line delivered with the quiet intensity of beginning a rise to crescendo. This song maybe is the beat to which the rest of the album is to be understood. But even still, I won't like this more than Magic.
And certainly not more than the all-encompassing energy and transcendence of The Rising. And as I talk the long walk home staring into a sky of memory and shadow, I keep finding myself returning to Thunder Road, Rosalita, Sandy, Born to Run, Jungleland. And when I get there...home.... to a place of quiet... then give me any of Bruce's solo stuff.
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