Bruce Springsteen’s Dreams Can Be Others’ Chances To Nap
Our look at the closing lines of the biggest new-music reviews continues with a roundup of reactions to Working On A Dream, the 16th studio album by Bruce Springsteen:
• “As the album winds down, two small gems arrive. On the elegiac ‘The Last Carnival,’ for late E Street member Danny Federici, and ‘The Wrestler,’ written for the acclaimed Mickey Rourke movie, the sparse arrangements let the emotions breathe. These two songs represent Springsteen at close to the top of his game, and unintentionally reveal what much of the rest of the album lacks.” [Greg Kot, Chicago Tribune]
• “[‘The Wrestler’ is] the kind of song that says more than its words convey because the listener knows it’s part of something bigger. Somewhere—in this case, in a film, but also in the other songs Springsteen has written that give a different bruised face and gritty voice to the same man—the song’s story continues. That’s how folk ballads work. Springsteen might be bored of being their champion, but nobody serves them better, even still, than him.” [Ann Powers, LA Times]
• “The anti-808s And Heartbreak. Hard work pays off in life and love and DC. Dream, baby, dream.” [Christopher R. Weingarten, 1000TimesYes]
• “But when you’re listening to a new album for the first time, there is sometimes one track that commands you to stop and play it again and again before carrying on to hear the rest. Here, that track is ‘This Life,’ a gorgeous medium-tempo pop song with melodic twists that could have come from the pen of Brian Wilson, or even his gruffer, more soulful brother, Dennis. If ‘Kingdom of Days’ sounds like a conscious attempt to recapture the pure-pop magic of ‘Hungry Heart,’ this more oblique song actually brings it off: it’s the one that’s in your head the next morning, and that the audiences will be singing back to him as soon as he hits the road again.” [Richard Williams, Guardian]
• “If you don’t count the soundtrack tune ‘The Wrestler,’ tacked on as a bonus cut, the album ends with ‘The Last Carnival,’ a plain-spoken, heart-rending elegy for E Street Band organ player Danny Federici, who died of cancer last year. The tune doubles as a sequel to Springsteen’s beloved 1973 song ‘Wild Billy’s Circus Story,’ in which the romance of the circus stood for life on the road—here, the circus is moving on without Billy. ‘Sundown, sundown/They’re taking all the tents down,’ Springsteen sings in a choked hush, at the bottom of his range. ‘Where have you gone, my handsome Billy?’ The song ends with a choir of what sounds like Springsteen’s and Patti Scialfa’s layered voices, vaulting up to infinity: For a fallen comrade, it’s one last opera out on the turnpike.” [Brian Hiatt, RS—look, it got a five-star rave]
