On the Shelf 111: Bruce Springsteen
Feb. 18th, 2014 06:35 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bedsitter23Springsteen has a new album out. High Hopes.
I talk about Springsteen a lot here, but he does stick out in my playlist like a (if not exactly) sore (then at least noticeably in pain) thumb.
It's silly of course, at this point, there's literally a genre full of musos who owe The Boss- Arcade Fire, Gaslight Anthem, The Hold Steady, and many more. Plus, Springsteen's recent albums have been fairly solid.
The good news is that The Boss has brought in one of my favorite musicians on the planet, Tom Morello. Rage Against the Machine started out almost as punchline punk, but it became very clear fairly fast that Morello was a very talented and unique guitarist. The relationship makes even more sense given that Morello's solo career (which is well worthwhile) is very much in debt to John Steinbeck, Woody Guthrie, Dylan- much of the same things Springsteen loves.
High Hopes is a very 'odds and sods' albums. You probably already know that going in. It's a collection of songs that Bruce has scrapped along the way, and has decided to make public here. I know that should be an expectation going in, but I really can't express that enough. It really is a mess of a collection that never really feels like a studio album normally would.
Morello's addition becomes the elephant in the room, and one does get excited about a dream team of Van Zandt, Lofgren, and Morello, but unfortunately, this one doesn't have much to recommend it to anyone but the die-hards (and from my understanding, in today's digital world, the die-hards may already have much of this)
Still, I am including it here for the cover of Suicide's "Dream Baby dream", which quickly seems an obvious cover for the Boss- a man who may not be as hip as the bands he covered in some circles (He also covers the Saints), but he really respects the music, and it shows when he performs it, and turns into a Springsteen-style stadium-rousing ballad.
I talk about Springsteen a lot here, but he does stick out in my playlist like a (if not exactly) sore (then at least noticeably in pain) thumb.
It's silly of course, at this point, there's literally a genre full of musos who owe The Boss- Arcade Fire, Gaslight Anthem, The Hold Steady, and many more. Plus, Springsteen's recent albums have been fairly solid.
The good news is that The Boss has brought in one of my favorite musicians on the planet, Tom Morello. Rage Against the Machine started out almost as punchline punk, but it became very clear fairly fast that Morello was a very talented and unique guitarist. The relationship makes even more sense given that Morello's solo career (which is well worthwhile) is very much in debt to John Steinbeck, Woody Guthrie, Dylan- much of the same things Springsteen loves.
High Hopes is a very 'odds and sods' albums. You probably already know that going in. It's a collection of songs that Bruce has scrapped along the way, and has decided to make public here. I know that should be an expectation going in, but I really can't express that enough. It really is a mess of a collection that never really feels like a studio album normally would.
Morello's addition becomes the elephant in the room, and one does get excited about a dream team of Van Zandt, Lofgren, and Morello, but unfortunately, this one doesn't have much to recommend it to anyone but the die-hards (and from my understanding, in today's digital world, the die-hards may already have much of this)
Still, I am including it here for the cover of Suicide's "Dream Baby dream", which quickly seems an obvious cover for the Boss- a man who may not be as hip as the bands he covered in some circles (He also covers the Saints), but he really respects the music, and it shows when he performs it, and turns into a Springsteen-style stadium-rousing ballad.
