Album Review: Bruce Springsteen – Working on a Dream

By Travis Woods

Release Date: 1.27.09

Label: Columbia Records

Let’s get something clear—despite the fact that we’ve been consistently hammered and inundated, for decades, with ‘best-since’ hyperbole in rock criticism (“Dylan’s best album since Blood on the Tracks!,” “The Stones’ best record since Some Girls!”), there is simply no other way around this: Bruce Springsteen’s Working on a Dream is a collection of his richest, most enthusiastically daring and varied music since the one-two punch of The River and Nebraska at the ominous trickle-down dawn of the Reagan era.

Collapsing all of his sonic musings of the past thirty years—the crooning romantic shuffle of Roy Orbison, the monolithic slabs of ringing and rattling Phil Spector production, the dark, socially conscious wit of Woody Guthrie via Bob Dylan, and the wild-eyed and blood-hot catharsis of Van Morrison-styled jukebox salvation—into a heat-blistered gumbo of classicist rock ‘n roll, Working on a Dream finds Springsteen wholly embracing the myth and expectations of being “The Boss” without succumbing to cynical rehashes or stumbling into Human Touch/ Lucky Town-era key-drenched cheese.

That rarest of albums—the ‘happy-in-love’ record that manages to be as exciting and visceral as the love that inspired it—Working revels in unabashed musical and lyrical exuberance: the aching waltz of “Queen of the Supermarket,” for example, finds a man falling for a woman behind the counter at a grocery store, and before the song can slip into the jagged chasm of cross-eyed and clichéd platitudes, the legendary Springsteen (who is not to be confused with the comfortable Bruce, the performer who released the portentous Magic over a year ago) raises his beard-scruffed head and howls, “I turn back for a moment and catch a smile that blows this whole fucking place apart,” sending the song into a dream-whipped flurry of choral blasts, rending guitars and crashing keys.

Elsewhere, the surging and string-blown epic “Outlaw Pete” opens the album with an eight-minute breathless sprint of a narrative tracing the downfall of a man succumbing to weakness and corruption (with strong, angry parallels to our most recent ex-president), reminding us that while Springsteen’s heart may be in the clouds, his head isn’t buried deep within the sand; the title track finds its protagonist in “Atlantic City” territory, desperately working towards a dream that is never guaranteed to come true as he (and the song) fight and trudge forward amidst a driving, insistent backbeat; and the heart-busted acoustic farewell of an album closer, “The Last Carnival,” pays a spare and striking tribute to the deceased E-Street Band organist, Danny Federici (whose son, Jason, plays accordion throughout the aching and surrealistic piece).

Powered by more inspiration, energy and sheer commitment to the act of music-making than anything he’s done since Born in the USA, Working on a Dream is, in a way, Springsteen’s repudiation of mortality, despite the touching tribute to a fallen friend—as a man in love, his rockers explode with a youthful vitality that refuse to concede to any form of surrender or end, and coupled with his feverish drive to make such a staggeringly excellent album this late in the game (Springsteen turns 60 this year), the Boss has proven that while he might have been born long ago, he isn’t done running quite yet.

January 27, 2009 | Filed Under Album Reviews 

Comments

One Response to “Album Review: Bruce Springsteen – Working on a Dream”

  1. Between Love and Like on January 28th, 2009 12:43 pm

    I’ve been ruminating on this record for weeks now and I love Bruce so of course, I wanna rave about it. But I dunno, I just don’t know….there’s moments of bloody heart-tearing brilliance (i.e., that line you quote from Queen of the Supermarket…lines like that are why I love the man), but then that gets paired with “At night, I take my groceries and I drift away” in the same song and I find myself shaking my head thinking what the hell?

    But you’re right, he’s not done yet….I just hope he can do it more evenly. I’d be curious to hear how you found last year’s “Magic” sometime.




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