Dave Marsh comments on "Working On a Dream" album
- From: SMBalloon <smballoon@xxxxxxx>
- Date: Sat, 21 Mar 2009 12:25:30 -0400
I lifted this from the Greasy Lake board. I hadn't seen it posted on
RMAS. Anyway, I really enjoyed this review and agree with it 100%.
Dave Marsh:
AISLES AND AISLES OF DREAMS?.Working on a Dream moves through every
musical mode Bruce Springsteen knows, including a few the rest of us
didn?t suspect he had. The soundscapes are the most complex
Springsteen has ever allowed himself?descended from Brian Wilson, the
Byrds, beloved heroes (and forgotten soldiers) of the British
Invasion, Jimmy Webb, the Walker Brothers, Phil Spector, and Ennio
Morricone. The album contains all sorts of stuff you?d never expect to
hear from the rustic Jersey boy he usually presents himself as. It
comes in the last two minutes of ?Outlaw Pete? (which is Once Upon A
Time In the West as Nevernever Land), the Beatlesque final section of
?Surprise Surprise,? the choir-like voices that bring ?The Last
Carnival? to its piteously beautiful conclusion, the opening and the
closing sections of ?Queen of the Supermarket,? and the way that Bruce
often lets himself sing, reminding us that Gene Pitney as well as Roy
Orbison are among his constant influences. Then again, his greatest
Roy homage ever crops up in ?Queen of the Supermarket.?
For all that, Working on a Dream is a classic Bruce Springsteen album.
The album has a theme, if not a story, and the theme wraps around
itself, with the child-like character in the opening song demanding
?Can you hear me?? and the wasted man in the last one declaring, that
if you have seen the world?s desolation, ?Then you?ve seen me.? The E
Street Bands works out the latest variant of its sound on ?My Lucky
Day,? ?What Love Can Do? and ?Life Itself.? ?Kingdom of Days? and
?Working on a Dream? perfect the white soul of Human Touch??Working?
even sports a Quiet Storm bass line. ?Outlaw Pete,? ?Tomorrow Never
Knows? and ?Good Eye? take the rustic Bruce and place him in the pop
context without seeming strained. ?The Last Carnival? is somewhere
between ?Sandy? and ?Terry?s Song.? And ?The Wrestler? sounds like
Nebraska?s ?Highway Patrolman? told by the wayward brother rather than
the cop (and that keyboard note in the opening is pretty much a quote
from ?Stolen Car?).
Springsteen?s two most recent E Street band albums, The Rising and
Magic, live very much in a realistic present. I think Working on a
Dream is the product of meditating on how past and present shape a
future, which means that every thread of innocence is bound up in the
wire of mortality. That is particularly true in the two least
characteristic songs on the album, ?Queen of the Supermarket? and
?Surprise Surprise.? In ?Queen,? disaster lurks in every happiness ?a
smile from the checkout girl on whom the singer fixates results in a
?winds up wounded, not even dead? moment easily as over the top as the
conclusion of ?Jungleland.? ?Surprise? is an ode to joy, from the
opening 12 string quote (from the Byrds? ?The Bells of Rhymney,? I
think, and later repeated as an instrumental bridge) to the exuberant
vocal, and the deceptively simple lyrics?it?s like a Beatles outtake,
an impression reinforced by the Abbey Road strings that well up after
the bridge and lead to the final repetitions of the chorus. It?s a
kind celebration that Springsteen often offers onstage but almost
never captures in the studio?the maximum happiness of being alive,
absolutely wallowing in the miracle of love.
These songs strive to be small in scale?they?re intricate but not
overblown--and even the easily seen political un
dertones in ?Queen of the Supermarket? are all but incidental. The
deviltry lies in the details, the way the album, like Born to Run,
offers an overarching restatement of certain parts of our musical
history, beginning with Outlaw Pete?s ?Can you hear me?? which is,
among other things, an allusion to Tommy. The Byrds and the Searchers,
the Ronettes and the Righteous Brothers, the Beatles and Jimmy Webb
crop up over and over again. On some songs, notably the title track,
the E Street Band is used almost as much as a vocal group as a rock
band, the way Brian Wilson so often used the Beach Boys? voices.
Ambiguity and contingency are everywhere. Something is always eating
away at something else, usually something fundamental: The singing
against the lyrics, the voices against the instruments, the ideas
against the performance.. Even a song that expresses as much faith as
?What Love Can Do? admits that love ?can?t stop this train / When it
comes crashing through.? In the beautiful celebration of a life well
made that is ?Kingdom of Days,? the prime injunction still arrives:
?Then prove it, then prove it, then prove it, baby blue.? (Possibly
the only Dylan allusion on the record.) These are the sounds of a
two-legged man denying nothing and exulting that he is free.
What is a masterpiece? A work by someone whose reputation is
impregnable, whose work is so distinctive that it is almost instantly
recognizable, and even when it is going someplace new, surprises
because it does not depart from what came before but enriches the past
by being enriched by it. In that respect, Bruce Springsteen has fought
all his life to make Working on a Dream. Tell me, friend, can you ask
for anything more? ?D..M.
(end)
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