Title: Working on a Dream
Artist: Bruce Springsteen
Genre: Rock / Folk
Release Date: 23rd January 2009
Label: Sony/BMG
Album Review
I could do a detailed introduction to BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN, but that would take ages, so I’m going to break it down a little. Fact is that BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN is one of the most successful rock musicians ever, and everyone, even if not having much interest in that kind of music at least knows his name. With ‘Working on a Dream’ he’s releasing his 24th album.
With the first track on the album he’s telling us the story about ‘Outlaw Pete’, a villain if ever there was one. We accompany him from the cradle to his mysterious vanishing later. The core message of this song I think is, as I’m getting it from the lyrics, that everyone’s able to change, if they really want to, like Pete, but the world kept seeing him as the outlaw all his life no matter what he would do. The song, with its eight minutes, not only presents the usual rock instrumentation like guitar, bass, or drums, Springsteen and his band employ a Hammond organ as well as poignant string arrangements mingling it all together in a diversified, erratic arrangement. The arrangement on ‘Working on a Dream’ is a lot more straight-forward and compact and the vocals are not keeping back with pathos, I like it nonetheless.
Both a bit of melancholy and gratitude go hand in hand on ‘This Life’. Guitars are very subtly integrated into this track and a layer of organ melodies underscores the powerful and sensitive chant of Springsteen’s. Only those ‘Ba Ba Ba’ backing vocals were a little unnerving. Now it’s getting dirty with ‘Good Eye’, Blues Rock dirty, actually. With distorted and raw sounding vocals it’s much unlike anything before. Sounds like 1889 down in Louisiana, sitting on the porch of a farm house with a harmonica and singing about life; hope that doesn’t sound too abstruse for you. ‘Life Itself’ takes the sound into a darker direction and lines like “Why the things that we treasure most slip away in time / ‘Til to the music we grow deaf and to god's beauty blind.”, are the lyrical extension of that atmosphere, instrumentally evoked with minor plucks, deep droning bass tones and a reversed guitar riff. ‘Working on a Dream’ is closed for good with the bonus track ‘The Wrestler’, a reduced, intimate, acoustic piece, composed for the same-titled film with Mickey Rourke, and rewarded with the Golden Globe for best song. Would have deserved a place in the regular track list if you ask me
Some will praise the album to heaven; others might shoot it down in flames. I will do neither of both things. Even if it isn’t an outstanding album, it’s still clearly above average and you should give it a chance to grow.
Tracklist
01. Outlaw Pete – 8:00
02. My Lucky Day – 4:00
03. Working on a Dream – 3:30
04. Queen of the Supermarket – 4:39
05. What Love Can Do – 2:56
06. This Life – 4:30
07. Good Eye – 3:00
08. Tomorrow Never Knows – 2:13
09. Life Itself – 4:00
10. Kingdom of Days – 4:02
11. Surprise, Surprise – 3:24
12. The Last Carnival – 3:29
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13. The Wrestler (Bonus Track) – 3:50
Line-up
Bruce Springsteen & The E-Street Band
Website
http://www.brucespringsteen.net/ / http://www.myspace.com/brucespringsteen
Cover Picture
Rating
Music: 7
Sound: 7
Extras: -
Total: 7 / 10
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