Bruce Springsteen, High Hopes, review (only 3 stars)
By Neil McCormick The Telegraph
12:01AM GMT 28 Dec 2013
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/cul...gh-Hopes-review.html
As one of rock’s great storytellers, Bruce Springsteen usually makes albums with a strong narrative thrust binding the songs together. So what are we supposed to make of a new CD that opens with a rocky cover of a folk song about finding hope in a hopeless world, ends with an atmospheric take on the romantic Dream Baby Dream (originally by synth band Suicide) and, in between, roams across topics including institutional racism, Vietnam, 9/11 and the everlasting triumph of our Lord Jesus Christ?
Although substantially re-recorded and presented as a new collection, these 12 tracks are odds and ends, “leftovers” from other sessions and new versions of songs that have taken different forms on the road. Springsteen has always written a lot of material which he shapes and filters, with some songs – ones that many fans consider classics – discarded from his sets as he goes. Previously, these sorts of rejects have surfaced on compilations, notably the excellent Tracks box set from 1998.
This time, he has revamped and re-recorded lost songs to bring them up to date. You can hear the old, meaty saxophone of Clarence Clemons (who died in 2011) and the rangy piano playing of Danny Federici (who died in 2008), but they’re combined with the new, slashing art-attack guitar of Rage Against The Machine’s Tom Morello, who was brought in to expand the E Street Band line up in 2012.
Morello is the album’s guiding spirit. But while his agit-pop sensibility is a good fit with Springsteen’s socio-political conscience, his effects-laden guitar playing operates at odd angles to the deep roots sensibility of the E Street sound. He slashes and burns through American Skin (41 Shots), a raging, angry anthem inspired by the 1999 police shooting of immigrant Amadou Diallo, giving Springsteen the contemporary edge he has been looking for.