A contender for my end of year album rundown. It didn't make it. It could have done very easily. Couldn't be bothered with the Dylan. Honorary mentions for Wire, X, Cornershop. Even The Strokes. It's hard to know what fits into this category these days. But this Brooce record is very good.
Bruce Springsteen released a new album a couple of days ago. This is big news for countless people across the planet. For good reason too. For Springsteen is one of the precious few utterly stellar, quite legendary and undeniable musicians Rock and Roll has produced, whether you care for his stuff or not. A grandiose artist with magnificent scope and ambition. One of those to follow and aspire towards and measure yourself against over the course of a lifetime.
The new record Letter To You is unmistakeably Brooce from its opening notes. No news there. The Boss is not someone who's about to surprise us this point in his career. Clanging, glorious riffs and booming stadium ramalama from the E Street Band playing as if it's their last hurrah which it might well be of course. Recorded in six days apparently. Guess they know what they're doing by now.
Springsteen himself sounds in quite the rudest of health. Blue collar anthems of pride, restistance and determination, the kind of stuff here's been churning out with production line regularity for fifty years or more now. Street poetry from a man who's been a long, long way but has never once forgotten where he started out from.
These are songs that fit snugly into the granite Springsteen canon like a whole new set of commandments. As so often he always skirts the line of cliche but ultimately transcends it, because here is a man who knows completely what he's doing.
Hats off to The Boss. I'm not sure whether I should listen to this or Born To Run really, they're both cut from the same immaculate cloth. Proper American hero. Should be in The White House really. But of course he always had far too much dignity to run.
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