BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN - Working On A Dream

A new Bruce Springsteen album barely a year after the previous one? "Yes, we can"… The era of long gaps between records seems well and truly over for the American rocker: galvanized by the advent of the Obama era, Springsteen gives in to the temptation to deliver his own personal inauguration address. The bitter sense of betrayal that ran through the reflection on America found on "Magic" thus gives way to a rediscovered "I have a dream": but the enthusiasm of dreams alone isn't enough, and "Working On A Dream", despite its far-from-coincidental timing with the changing of the guard at the White House, fails to redeem the lackluster results of his previous outing with the E Street Band.

It all started with a song recorded almost by chance during the final weeks of work on "Magic", a sturdy, Tom Petty-esque ballad titled "What Love Can Do". "It was kind of a meditation on love in the age of Bush", Springsteen recalls. "It sounded more like the first song of a new record than something that fit on 'Magic'. So our producer Brendan O'Brien said: Hey, let's make another one right now!". That's how a handful of songs, written in a burst in Atlanta on the tail end of the "Magic" sessions, took shape, later completed over the course of the following tour with the E Street Band.

But this is no mere collection of leftovers from the previous record: "Working On A Dream" heads in a different, in some ways unprecedented direction for Springsteen's discography. Where "Magic" tried to update the guitar-driven wall of sound of "Born To Run" without quite recapturing its pathos and inspiration, the new album chooses to venture into a lyrically expansive pop classicism, taking Elvis Presley and Roy Orbison as its guiding spirits. What's missing, though, is that subtle grace capable of saving ambition from toppling over into bombast.

Take the opening "Outlaw Pete", which with its eight-minute runtime aims for a Morricone-flavored western epic: that string-laden motif, which echoes nothing less than Kiss's "I Was Made For Lovin' You", ends up draining the song's narrative of intensity, stripping it of all its depth. The same goes for "This Life" and the supermarket-checkout ode "Queen Of The Supermarket", which both take off from the atmospheres of "Girl In Their Summer Clothes" in pursuit of Brian Wilson-style baroque harmonies, only to founder amid saccharine backing vocals. The E Street Band barely stands out, as Brendan O'Brien's production once again shrink-wraps every nuance in plastic. And "Kingdom Of Days" flaunts the worst of latter-day Springsteen's melodic soppiness, slipping into a kitsch comparable only to the album's cover art.

Better, then, to turn to the tracks more suited to Springsteen's strengths, from the bluesy rasp of "Good Eye" to the galloping guitars, organ and piano of "My Lucky Day", which for a moment seems to recapture a drive worthy of the "The River" era. "Working On A Dream" is an all-too-varied, uneven jukebox of a record, swinging from the R.E.M.-esque power-pop of "Surprise, Surprise" to the bombast of the title track, from the country lightness of "Tomorrow Never Knows" to the "Tunnel Of Love"-style chiaroscuro of "Life Itself". But it's only when Springsteen bares his songwriting craft once again that the record truly breathes real expressive force, as in the farewell of "The Last Carnival", a final tribute to the late Danny Federici, his old partner in arms, or in the bonus track "The Wrestler", already a Golden Globe winner for its appearance in Darren Aronofsky's film of the same name.

"The past is never past. It's always present, you always carry it with you", Springsteen states firmly. "They're your sins. It's better to learn to live with them, to learn the story they tell. Because they whisper your future in your ear, and if you don't listen it will be poisoned by your past." You cannot build the future without having reckoned with the past: Outlaw Pete tried to escape it, but fate came back to flush him out. And face to face with Dan the bounty hunter, he had to confront reality: no one can escape themselves. "We cannot undo these things we've done".

Time is the true protagonist of "Working On A Dream": time flowing relentlessly on, time that seems to consume everything. "With you I don't hear the minutes ticking by", sings Springsteen, on the threshold of sixty, in "Kingdom Of Days", “I don’t feel the hours as they fly / I don’t see the summer as it wanes / Just a subtle change of light upon your face”. Only the company of a beloved presence can restore meaning to the vanishing of the days. Only the mysterious essence of love can give hope back to a soul crushed under the weight of its own sins. “Here we bear the mark of Cain / But let the light shine through / Let me show you what love can do”.

"Working On A Dream" shows a bolder streak than "Magic", but despite some solid moments it stumbles into a series of missteps that are even harder to forgive. "Tell me, friend, can you ask for anything more?", Springsteen asks himself in "The Wrestler". Yes, Bruce, you can ask for more: you can dream of a record that once again lives up to one of the most sincere voices in American song. "Though sometimes it feels so far away, I'm working on a dream".

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23/01/2009