Quietus | Opinion | Bruce Springsteen



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The Springsteen team kept Western Stars in a box for nearly five years, while Bruce was distracted by his Born to run memories, box reissues and Broadway show, which lasted more than a year. Closer to him, he would never have come to a day job, he said.

Now that this new album is coming out, they are already announcing the next album and promising an E Street Band tour in 2020, as if worried about Western starsMusical gap they need to mitigate our reaction. It's a left turn, but honestly, it's not extreme.

Simple orchestral riffs and a warm West Coast production focus on a collection of songs that would otherwise have been too understated for his rock cannon, but too pleasant for a clean Bruce solo album. God, "nice" is an overwhelming word.

The voice comes off powerfully. Springsteen stretches and allows at the same time the modern studio deception to get to work, in a way that we have not heard (or at least noticed) on his latest records. We get the sweetness, the soaring heights, the good crooning. The chorus of the second single "There Goes My Miracle" is so powerful that it draws you from daydream to admire it. the "Sundown" high-end punch that looks like Bruce doing The Killers doing Bruce; and the orderly melody of 'Chasin' Wild Horses'; all the beautiful songs.

In contrast, the very fashionable orchestral arrangements have the tight rhythm and limited melody of a saxophone or an organ part too stated. The story often has a dull aspect: a lyrical role play in the service of the "feeling" of the project, generating more cheese and clichés than usual. Springsteen is always romantic, but we need his courage and his talent for black as counterweight. So, 'Drive Fast (The Stuntman)' is a mesmerizing listener, but abandons subtlety midway. "Wayfarer" and "There Goes My Miracle" are fully realized sound adventures, but their stories are modest and cowardly.

In the worst case, you will notice that Bruce does not speak well and misinterprets them, rather than perfecting them beforehand. Little writers do it all the time – but whole decades have passed without him doing it once – and this album has some clangers.

It may not matter, when it's as beautiful and uplifting as listening. But it can be a persistent problem for Western stars: Rubbery and delicious music like this one emphasizes – rather than disguises – the need for a nuanced and piquant story. Especially when the nascent world of American song has become so clever with relatively tiny budgets. Regardless of Jason Isbell, one can measure the achievements of Hooray For The Raff Riff or The Delines and find Western stars want to. In fact, the songs here lack the depth and reality of, for example, Lorde or Billie Eilish in the world of pure pop. The marshmallow needed more toast and the fire is there.

I wonder if Springsteen has learned too much about himself, to search so brutally for the memoir and on Broadway, with a black humor and an exhilarating visionary truth. He has set a new standard. planted near the place Darkness on the Edge of Town or Nebraska it took in the previous decades.

It's not that. Still, it's a rewarding hour and he deserved a little relief.

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