By: David Schultz

When Bruce Springsteen released Magic, stories floated around that Springsteen had recorded enough material for a second album. Listening to Working On A Dream, you wouldn’t be hard pressed to believe that those rumors were true; too much of The Boss’ latest sounds like material that didn’t make the cut in 2007. Overly earnest songs of the plight of the working class sung by a multi-millionaire who reached his exalted status by singing paeans of busting out of his humble origins need to be crafted just right or they lose all relevance. On Working On A Dream, Springsteen’s creative barometer is slightly askew and instead of achieving poignancy, he comes up with songs like “Queen Of The Supermarket,” which would be the Springsteen parody since “Tweeter And The Monkey Man” if the spoof wasn’t unintentional.

Springsteen sounds like he’s having a blast, romping through “Good Eye” but his Seeger tinged “Surprise, Surprise” lacks the populist heart. Where Magic had a disquieting furor underscoring its reformative ethos, Working On A Dream contains the remnants of The Boss’ Yes We Can thoughts of idle optimism. When Springsteen is inspired, there’s no one better and slogging through the overly long (I Was Made For Loving) “Outlaw Pete,” which borrows way too heavily from the lowest point of Kiss’ career, pays dividends by the album’s end. “The Last Carnival” Springsteen’s elegy for Danny Federici hearkens back to the Greetings From Asbury Park days and even though the soaring gospel chorus that closes the song doesn’t entirely flow, it’s a fitting and apt coda to a heartfelt song. “The Wrestler” also hits its mark, Springsteen’s song for the Mickey Rourke vehicle, criminally ignored by this year’s Academy Awards, serves as a more apt encomium for the national mindset then any of the pablum that precedes it.

Springsteen has always had an intimate feel for the American mindset and outside of “The Wrestler,” Working On A Dream seems like last year’s sentiment. Perhaps if he’d waited a couple more months to truly get a feel for the economic collapse, Springsteen could have had come up with something epic, instead, we get the equivalent of a rummage through his closet.

Labels: Bruce Springsteen