Album review: Working On A Dream, Bruce Springsteen

Published on Friday 23 January 2009 15:00

BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN Working On A Dream Sony BMG, £12.72

The Boss's dream is still a work in progress, a labour of love and now a beacon of hope for his country's ageing blue-collar population. This album resounds with the same passion as Born In The USA a quarter of a century ago, less relentlessly intense but no less of its time.

Recorded with the E Street Band off the back of the Magic tour, the record is road hardened but dripping with studio savvy. 'This Life' is a lushly layered sweep of epic pop, replete with a "pah-pah pah-pah pah-pah" chorus tumbling over Clarence Clemons' saxophone on the fade.

Then the honking harp of the blues stomp 'Good Eye' yields to the freshly picked crisp country two-step 'Tomorrow Knows', and we are at the epicentre of Springsteen's pop kaleidoscope. There lies 'Life Itself', a dense sweep of a song shimmering with rippling guitar figures and the majestic strings of 'Kingdom Of Days'. Anyone would think it had been composed especially for Obama's inauguration.

'Surprise Surprise' is the lightest, frothiest Sixties pop confection you could imagine in your biggest bubblegum dream, then the palate is cleared with the poignant simplicity of 'The Last Carnival' and his raw-boned ache of a song, 'The Wrestler'.

Where he once bristled with testosterone-fuelled certainty in 'She's The One', he is now in love with 'The Queen Of The Supermarket', in a trolley hurtling round the aisles rather than Highway 9.

Download this: Life Itself, The Last Carnival