Working On A Dream Bruce Springsteen Reviewed By : Michael Simon

Having heard the new album’s first single ‘The Wrestler’, you might have thought that ‘Working on a Dream’ would be pulling The Boss down the dark way of Johnny Cash's seminal album ‘The Man Comes Around’. Prepare to be disabused of the notion, because ‘Working on a Dream’ is a line-up of the all too familiar country-rock belters that Springsteen is famous for. And despite sounding like an Obama campaign slogan, the album has very little in common with the handover of the presidency. In fact, the only perceptible note of “Change with a capital C” is the record's consistently positive tone. What does preoccupy 59-year-old Springsteen's 16th album is a string of tunes held together by the theme “the everyday”, and specifically, of suburban romance.

The album gets off to a shaky start with the overlong 'Outlaw Pete', a limply cinematic ballad about the aforementioned 'Pete', which switches from ill-considered electronic effects to peculiarly placed Sergio Leone harmonicas.

To better effect, Bruce posts his love-letter-to-a-check-out-girl in the form of 'Queen of the Supermarket' – the high point of the album's romantic theme. “I'm in love with the queen of the supermarket,” The Boss croons, before launching off about the Big Bang as a metaphor for suburban romance in 'This Life'. Unfortunately, it is tracks like 'Outlaw Pete', 'This Life' and 'Surprise, Surprise’ that give the album an occasionally tacky and misjudged feeling.

However, there's plenty to like here, from the upbeat tunes 'My Lucky Day' and 'What Love Can Do' to the broad range of 'Good Eye' and 'Kingdom of Days'. But it’s the two closing tracks which really shine.

The standout track of the album, ‘The Wrestler’, so powerfully communicates a deeply felt sense of exhaustion and defeat, leaving you wondering whether this was what it felt like to be Bruce Springsteen through the Republican 1980s and 2000s. It makes a particularly poignant pairing with the finale, 'The Last Carnival', which is a particularly thoughtful piece, elegising the E Street Band’s organ-player, Danny Federici, who died of cancer in 2008. Following the theme of 1973's 'Wild Billy's Circus Story', it tells the end of the tale as the circus finally pulls away without “Billy”, and with all the sadness that that entails.

 ‘Working on a Dream’ is full of humanity and thoughtfulness, and at the same time, besides its dark concluding tracks, is almost relentlessly positive. But, despite a small handful of standout tracks, too much of the album feels uneasily derivative or hampered by poorly thought out experimentation.

7/10

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