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.

Topics: CD Reviews , Music, New Orleans, Columbia, More

| More

Most Popular

The Current Issue

Table of Contents

Cover Archive

Masthead | Authors | Contact us

Blogs

Christopher Shea's Berlin Diary, part two
Outside The Frame | February 15, 2013 at 5:11 PM

Free Fun Shit: Feb 15-21: Slumbrew social, Central Square roast, Chinese New Year celebration, Crabbie's ginger beer tasting + more
Phlog | February 15, 2013 at 3:38 PM

[audio] Peter Hook on WFNX: the legacy of Joy Division, feuding with New Order, and his new book, "Unknown Pleasures"
On The Download | February 15, 2013 at 1:08 PM

Q&A #7: GOP Senate Field
Talking Politics | February 15, 2013 at 12:40 PM

[from the gut] Demanding style over substance in indie music and culture
On The Download | February 15, 2013 at 12:38 PM

CURRENT CONTESTS

BOSTON'S FINEST -- Ticket Giveaway

SNITCH -- Ticket Giveaway

All Promotions . . .

ARTICLES BY ZETH LUNDY

SCOTT WALKER | BISH BOSCH | November 27, 2012
Scott Walker's late-period about-face is one of the strangest in the annals of pop music.

BILL WITHERS | THE COMPLETE SUSSEX AND COLUMBIA ALBUMS | October 31, 2012
Bill Withers has always been the down-to-earth, odd-man-out of the '70s soul brothers: he's the one who came bearing a lunch box on the cover of his relaxed 1971 debut, Just as I Am .

R.E.M. | DOCUMENT [25TH ANNIVERSARY EDITION] | September 19, 2012
Fans of R.E.M. enjoy arguing over which album was the band's true shark-jump, but 1987's Document was inarguably the end of a groundbreaking era.

RICHARD HAWLEY | STANDING AT THE SKY'S EDGE | September 04, 2012
Richard Hawley's seventh studio album opens with "She Brings the Sunlight," a clouds-parting, hippy-dippy drone explosion that plays like "Tomorrow Never Knows" caught in the echo of a football stadium.

BOB MOULD | SILVER AGE | August 28, 2012
Now that he's getting love as a godfather figure from both sides of the indie/mainstream divide (see No Age and Foo Fighters, for starters), Bob Mould is again playing like he has something to prove — or at least an iconography to maintain.