This Album Is Boss

Bruce Springsteen
Working On A Dream
Columbia Records
Five Scoops of Bosco

Reviewed by Allen Bacon, The Daily Bosco

I must admit it took me a couple of listens of Bruce Springsteen's latest before I really started liking it. Picked it up Friday night and by Sunday evening, especiailly after the Boss and his fellow E Streeter's energizing performance at the Super Bowl Halftime show....I was wearing the CD thin.

Working On A Dream is Springsteen's second album in only fifteen months. The guy is on a roll again. Enjoy it while you can because if history is any indication it may be about four or five years until the next one. That's been his history anyway going back to his first two legendary albums which were put out in a span of eight months.

But let's be perfectly honest here. Springsteen has slipped into a predictable formula on his albums. That's not necessarily a bad thing...it's like putting on a comfortable pair of jeans. It feels good and you know what to expect.

It's all here on this album.

The Ballad (Outlaw Pete, The Last Carnival)...check. The Rousing Anthem (My Lucky Day, Working On A Dream)...check. The Party Rock and Roll Song (What Love Can Do, Surprise)...Check. The brooding and moody love songs (Life Itself, Queen of the Supermarket)...check. The Movie theme song (The Wrestler)...check

A couple of the songs seem like nods or homages to other artists. Listen to This Life and see if you don't hear Brian Wilson. The beginning of Tomorrow Never Knows sounds curiously like the beginning of a Creedence Clearwater Revival song.

My favorite song is a gritty, swamp-based number called Good Eye. Outlaw Pete has a couple of the funniest lines (He was born a little baby on the Appalachian Trail..at six months old he'd done three months in jail... But at eight minutes, the ballad is about seven minutes too long.

Great performances by the rest of the E Street Band too. Most notably Clarence Clemons, Nils Lofgren, Max Weinberg and Steve Van Zandt. That sounds like an all-star band now...A who's who of musicians.