Bruce Springsteen - Working on a Dream (Columbia)
4/5
By: Matt Tomiak
The New York Times was referring to the triumph of a certain The Wire-loving, West Ham supporting B. Obama as the figurehead in the "restoration of the mythology of American possibility" earlier in the month, but over the past 35 years Bruce Springsteen has been attempting to serve as just that, acting as a beacon of hope, inspiration and patriotic dissidence throughout a career that stretches all the way back to the Nixon administration.
It might not have always been so easy to love the USA during the past eight years, but Working On A Dream, his 16th album, is no puffed-up,triumphalisttwo-fingered farewell to Bush and co; indeed, it's possibly less overtly politicised than 2007's Magic, which beneath a glossy AOR surface rallied against the conflict in Iraq and the War on Terror. This is an album heavy with the themes of transience, personal accountability and counting one's blessings. It also comes poignantly dedicated to E Street organist/keyboard player Danny Federici who died last year, one of Bruce's longest-serving musical associates and a man once described by The Boss as "the most instinctive and natural musician I ever met.'
Working On A Dream is bookended by invocations of the great dream factory of Hollywood. It opens with 'Outlaw Pete', a marathon tribute to the odyssey western and ends with 'The Wrestler', the theme song to the excellent Mickey Rourke movie of the same name. The former is an epic in the truest sense - an eight minute long composition recounting the fugitive exploits of an incorrigible anti-hero, not dissimilar to another grandiose character study of injustice, Bob Dylan's 'Hurricane' from his 1976 album Desire ("We cannot undo these things we've done", the murderous bandit is informed before his demise). The latter is an unobtrusive yet powerful recognition of the depredation of old age, with a weary, wiped-out narrator feeling like "a one legged dog makin' his way down the street".
Springsteen celebrates his 60th birthday in 2009, and no-one could accuse this record of not sounding age-appropriate. "Why do the things that we treasure most slip away in time"? he ponders in the solemn 'Life Itself', whilst 'My Lucky Dream' and 'This Life' are saturated in gratitude and love for life and legacy. Even the ZZ Top-style southern-fried electo boogie of guttural rocker 'Good Eye' doesn't feel strained or affected. 'Queen Of The Supermarket' might raise eyebrows, however, with the with a knowing nod to the days of Cars and Girls with a promise of "a dream awaiting in aisle number two" and a checkout girl's "smile that blows this whole f**king place apart", but ought perhaps to be appreciated in the same tongue-in-cheek vein as Neil Young's recent 'Dirty Old Man'.
An apt soundtrack, then, for a brave new dawn in the United States, as Bruce Springsteen remains emblematic as ever of America the illuminating city, not the insular fortress, on the hill.
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