Bruce Springsteen--Working On A Dream

This is really, really good.

5 stars from RS!!

I love the opening song.

OUTLAW PETE
I'M OUTLAW PETE

A dissapointment... clunky musically and mostly boring. see the comments on the Bruce classic/dud thread

Bruce Springsteen - Classic or Dud ?

on first listen i'm kinda ambivalent...dunno if i liked it as much as Magic and i was lukewarm on that one to begin with...i'll give it time, though.

I like that he's taking risks, like Outlaw Pete and Queen Of The Supermarket. Basically I'm just glad there's fun, catchy Springsteen songs again and he's not singing in that odd drawl, which none of us here in New Jersey have.

My favorite is Life Itself, one of the least arena-like songs he's ever done.

i dunno, the drawl is still there as far as i can tell...those songs are kinda fun, though.

music aside, its a truly dreadful cover.

surprise surprise come on open your eyes

"Outlaw Pete" is KISS's "I Was Made For Lovin' You" played by The Killers.

Most of this sounds like More Magic. Brendan O'Brien's penchant for throwing sludge on fine-tuned musical filigrees continues.

I can't bear to open any of the film threads on ILE, for a variety of reasons, but what's the thinking on the Oscar snub for the title tune for "The Wrestler"? That song is flat out amazing.

this isn't bad! but wtf@ the last few songs like "surprise, surprise" and "the carnival" which are basically above-average church songs

The New Jersey drawl is real! From an interview with Steve Earle, southern man:

"Look at Freehold (New Jersey, the home of Bruce Springsteen); they call that area ‘Texas,’ because all these people from the South had come up there to work. It’s an accent you know the second you hear it.”

Two things:

1. "Queen of the Supermarket" is one of the most embarrassing songs ever written by anyone.
2. "Surprise, Surprise" totally rips off "Time" by Tom Waits. Listen again.

Already posted this on rolling country (which I assume most people hear avoid); hadn't seen this til now -- looks like Soto noticed the Kiss thing too:

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Two listens in (which is all I'm gonna attempt), by far the funniest thing about the new Springsteen album is how the background "doo-doo-doo"s in the opening track "Outlaw Pete" sound exactly like "I Was Made For Loving You" by Kiss, their late '70s disco move which has since been covered by countless gay Euro Hi-NRG acts.

And I guess it says something for the album that I was actually able to make it through twice without pushing reject, but not that much. I think Bruce's voice's is just really shot and coagulated and sodden these days -- but then, I've thought that for almost two decades now, and if the songs actually had some energy to them, I might not mind so much. What I really really really hate is Brendan O'Brien's totally vacant and antiseptic new age bachelor-pad Muzak schmaltz production touches, which I gather are supposed to give the music space and drama, but to me just drain it of any life.

Not that it would have that much to begin with, but at least, sometimes, in the first half of the album, some semblance of Springsteen's old knack for melodies seems to be there, albiet submerged somewhere under O'Brien's bloat -- like, in "My Lucky Day" (didn't he already have a boring album with a name like that?), you can sort of hear the amusement park sound of Born To Run, but it's way out there in the distance, like you're listening across a couple bodies of water and all this wind, which just dampens the effect and makes it all moot.

I like the straightforward lyrics of "Queen of the Supermarket" okay (he's got a crush on the cashier who bags his groceries, like Jonathan Richman at the bank), but then I think of how catchy, say, Kenny Chesney could make it (hasn't he had grocery cashier as heroine songs in the past couple years already?) And there's something vaguely Celtic about the guitars and backup vocals of "What Love Can Do," and "Good Eye," I think it is, tries to get a sorta CCR swamp-blues groove going. But none of it clicks. Springsteen sings a lot of it in this weird detached way that sounds really heavy-handed to me, like he's "interpreting" some old standards somebody else wrote -- putting them on a pedastal or something. Strange since the songs aren't all that good in the first place. (Aren't some or all of these suppposed to be outtakes from his last mediocre album?)

Another thing that kind of amused me is how, in "Tomorrow Never Knows" (which halfway counts as country since it's got green grass growing), his voice sounds so much like tired late-period Mellencamp, who back in the '80s everybody thought of as a Bruce ripoff to begin with. And then toward album's end there's this song called "The Last Carnival" that comes off like a much lamer version of "County Fair," which was probably the most tolerable song from Mellencamp's mostly lame '08 album; I guess circus-as-aging metaphors are a new trend. (Is that a Tom Waits thing?) Then, next and last song ("The Wrestler," alleged "bonus track"), Springsteen mentions a scarecrow!

And oh yeah, not that it necessarily would have salvaged the thing, but I really expected Bruce to be an opportunist and somehow tackle the economy -- layoffs, foreclosures, plants closing, etc. Isn't that part of why he exists? And if not now, when? He practically owned the Reagan era recession. But nope, there's none of that at all.

brendan o'brien is a horrible producer

This record is an abolute corker. It's remarkable how at his age, when others are finished, the Boss keeps pushing on and knocking out joyful, warm and inspiring records in quick succession. D&D, Magic and this could be viewed as a late great trilogy? But maybe it doesn't work like that (and Seeger Sessions were along that road also).

I love 'outlaw pete' so much

'Queen of the Supermarket' I find one of the loveliest and most irresistible tracks that this lovely artist has ever cut.

yeah that's the other instant classic.

I sorta had a knee-jerk reaction to the phrase 'working on a dream' which seems really cheese-ball, but the song itself is actually sorta interesting if you lump it with the rest of his 'reason to believe'-type songs. There's also definitely some spirit of his early stuff lingering around these new songs.

And oh yeah, not that it necessarily would have salvaged the thing, but I really expected Bruce to be an opportunist and somehow tackle the economy -- layoffs, foreclosures, plants closing, etc. Isn't that part of why he exists? And if not now, when? He practically owned the Reagan era recession. But nope, there's none of that at all.

Those were his Reagan albums, this is his Obama-album. Hopeful but very weary. I can't see this album happening outside of the context of a recession.

i actually started loling when i was watching him on fuse's boneroo live footage....when he raises his arm and says "i'm ooooutlaw pete" sounding all piratey and shit...man i dunno i think i might be starting to understand my friends that hate on bruce

outlaw pete is awesome

no....maybe...i don't know....it's like i'm actually feeling my lifelong springsteen fanhood slipping away

outlaw pete is awesome

it's just not working for me. you can say that but it's like i took aspirin and i still have a headache.

rip brooce

no....maybe...i don't know....it's like i'm actually feeling my lifelong springsteen fanhood slipping away

It'll come back. I say put the records away for a while and come back to them when it feels right.

for me this boardwalk life's through....you oughta quit this scene too ;_;

gonna agree with M@tt here -- "outlaw pete" struck me as kinda retarded. but this is from a guy who doesn't like anything post-Tunnel of Love, so .... go back to the 70s bootlegs!

outlaw pete is exactly as retarded as, say, 'rosalita' and less retarded than stuff like 'zero and blind terry'... I can't understand someone being able to enjoy his early material but not this.

that's the thing though, outlaw pete is almost like a virus, retroactively destroying my enjoyment of all old springsteen that i used to love...like now only hearing this bloviating, overblown mess.......aaaaiiiiiiiiaeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee

Nobody bats 1.000, even Springsteen. But there are plenty of great songs on Working On A Dream. Life Itself is my favorite.

"Rosalita" is retarded but still kicks so much more ass than "Outlaw Pete"

virtually this whole LP is amazingly good !!

is it? man, maybe i need to listen to it again?

Outlaw Pete is great you menkos. That said, I like my Springsteen overblown and ridiculous.

Outlaw Pete is about the worst thing he ever done. rest of it is pretty decent though, though my initial enthusiasm faded afters about 5 spins.

this album is fucking horrid.

if you pick "outlaw pete" as your lead-off track, you are in trouble.

for a while his lyrics were better than his toons, now both are down at the same crap level.

I just love "Surprise Surprise", it's insanely catchy. Plus, it's a "happy birthday" song and I played it to my kid on his birthday and now he loves it too.

I've never been a huge fan outside the title tune of Born in the U.S.A. and his cover of "Santa Claus is Coming to Town," but I picked this up a try after seeing the oh-brother five stars in Rolling Stone and thought I'd give him a chance. I had much the same initial reaction as some--production compressed within an inch of its life.

But he sounds more Orbisonian than ever, that massive wonderful vibrato of his more and more unwieldy. And the more I listened, the more moving I found it. The inverse Clash of "Queen of the Supermarket" (which I think is more intentionally humorous than given credit above), the similar balance of tall satire and sincerity in "Outlaw Pete," the utilitarian catchiness and whistle-while-you-work break of the title track, the whispery sweep of "Life Itself," and the pure pop timelessness of "Surprise, Surprise" and "This Life." At the end of "Supermarket," the checkout beep becomes a heart monitor. Either you find this kind of thing hilarious and touching or you don't, I guess. My experience of supermarkets is more the Patton Oswalt robots-making-you-work at midnight at the Rainbow, but I think the song is more about longing for an overblown fantasy than about trying to imagine a credible scenario.

Really, one of my favorite albums this year.

My typos and messy writing aside obviously...

Even warming to the was-once-filler-for-me ("What Love Can Do," "Kingdom of Days") and remembering I've liked other Springsteen and thinking I should buy all the rest when I have money...

I'M OUTLAW PETE

i can't hear you

Happy Bday Boss!
60 years old.

Happy Birthday.

really didn't like this after really liking Magic, although both of them sound like shit