CD Reviews

Bruce Springsteen | Wrecking Ball

Columbia (2012)

By ZETH LUNDY | March 6, 2012

1.5 Stars

There was a time when Bruce Springsteen didn't need rousing choirs, swelling orchestrations, or repetitive Pogues poses to broadcast anthemic populist subversion. On his 17th studio album, a gregarious racket is always waiting around the corner — a muddled fusion of Irish folk melody, gospel fervor, New Orleans brass, and inoffensive "electronic" supplements. (Honestly, I'll take those offensive Tunnel of Love synths any day.) The uptick of sonic activity on this record, the first to be released following the death of Springsteen's right-hand saxman Clarence Clemons, is perhaps overcompensation for the lack of good songs. As a post-Occupy album, it's less ripped-from-the-headlines and more cribbed-from-older-and-better-ideas. "Banker man grows fat, working man grows thin/It's all happened before, it'll happen again," Springsteen sings in the ponderous "Jack of All Trades," as if he had just spent the last hour listening to "Badlands" for inspiration. Whether "We Take Care of Our Own" should be read ironically hardly seems to matter, since every line is a tossed-off platitude. The church-pop atrocity "Rocky Ground" is even worse. And though Bruce has never been Cole Porter in the melody department, 21st-century Boss is exceptionally tuneless. On the other hand: "You've Got It" is a rare diamond in the rough, a witty ode to the ineffable that sounds like a Tunnel of Love outtake set to the melody of "Walkin' to New Orleans." How it worked its way into this mess is anyone's guess. Perhaps Springsteen has finally become the thing that many have accused him of being, though few of us have wanted to admit it: a cliché rider rather than a cliché overrider. Or just another once-relevant icon telling us what he thinks we want to hear.

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Alex Chilton | Free Again: The ''1970'' Sessions
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Cardinal | Hymns
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Snow Patrol | Fallen Empires
Word on the street had Snow Patrol looking to change up the big anthem sound for their sixth release.
O'Brother | Garden Window
O'Brother's bio for their debut album, Garden Window, reads in part: "Native American tradition believed taking a picture of someone also took a piece of their soul. O'Brother views this album in the same vein. It captures a piece of them at a time in their lives that they will never get back."
Guided by Voices | Let's Go Eat the Factory
The GBV name on Let's Go Eat the Factory' s label indicates two things to those fans: this is the first record to feature the "classic" Bee Thousand/Alien Lanes line-up since 1996, and this is the first Pollard album to deserve the GBV moniker since the break-up.
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Brite Futures | Dark Past
A few years ago, the cutesy teens in Natalie Portman's Shaved Head slid out of Seattle on the hot pink shoulders of robo-bounce kinda-hit "Me + Ur Daughter" and the cheap intrigue of a ridiculous moniker.
A Place to Bury Strangers | Onwards to the Wall
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Cloud Nothings | Attack on Memory
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