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Believe in 'Magic'

Move over Houdini, Bruce, E Street Band's new album real 'Boss'

By Jeremy Johnson
jjohn308@mscd.edu

It’s the inherent nature of music to always seek progression and fundamental rock ’n’ roll, with its constant popular evolution, is no exception. It’s perfectly natural for a musician to leap from genre to genre in lyrical and compositional games of hopscotch. Hell, everyone does it, even The Boss.

But forget all about the not-soglorious days of Bruce Springsteen (i.e. Tunnel of Love and Human Touch), when his failing marriage and midlife melancholy led him to wear string ties and make mostly solo, heart-felt and introspective, but dulled-down and plain boring music. Now Springsteen is back with his bandanas and faded jeans, the E Street Band and the classic sound that made him The Boss of classic rock in the first place.

There’s really no mystery to Springsteen’s Magic (special release Sept. 18, due out Oct. 2 from Columbia Records everywhere), and despite the title track’s allusion to trickery, Bruce has no cards up his fl annel sleeve. Instead, the E Street Band and their notorious Boss do what they’ve always done best: classic but complex compositions and strong, steady rock rhythms (with Conan O’Brien bandleader Max Weinberg on drums and part-time wiseguy Steve Van Zandt on rhythm guitar and mandolin) blended with soft keyboard chords (long-time E Street member and piano player Roy Bittan) and powerful horn solos (the always-classy Clarence “Big Man” Clemons).

And, of course, Springsteen again has his thumb on the pulse of Americana with his stripped-down lyrics about life, love, and all the regrets. The realities of all evoke a wide array of emotions. In other words, Bruce tells it like it is and your sense of kinship with Springsteen’s dark world leaves you feeling vulnerable, but hungry to listen on.

With his usual political wit, the album opens with current hit radio single, “Radio Nowhere,” a venomous commentary on the sterile state of contemporary music: “I was tryin’ to fi nd my way home/ But all I heard was a drone/ Bouncing off a satellite/ Crushin’ the last lone American night/ This is radio nowhere/ Is there anybody alive out there?”

It’s a full-throttle, emphatic tour de force for The Boss and the E Street Band from there, reminiscent of an early era of Springsteen (Darkness On The Edge Of Town, The River, Nebraska and, of course, Born In The U.S.A.) that had rallied several post-hippie generations reeling on the heels of war and unemployment.

In addition to his typical social satire, Springsteen, who turned 58 on Sept. 23, is showing the kind of poetic wisdom that develops with time and age. The second track “You’ll Be Coming Down” delivers a caustic gloss-over of a young girls’ limited assets: “You’ll be fi ne as long as your pretty face holds out/ Then it’s gonna get pretty cold out/ And empty stream of stars shooting by/ You got your hopes on high/ You’ll be comin’ down now, baby.” Meanwhile, the fourth track, “Your Own Worst Enemy” is another scathing examination of vice and neuroses: “You can’t sleep at night/ You can’t dream your dream/ Your fi ngerprints on fi le/ Left clumsily at the scene/ Your own worst enemy’s come to town.”

Not all of Bruce’s bleeding heart sympathies are so blatant and songs like “Girls In Their Summer Clothes,” (backed blissfully by E Street’s Soozie Tyrell and her violin) seem to be nothing more than a recollection of squandered opportunities, that is until the underlying themes reveal the much more complicated theme of mortality: “She went away/ She cut me like a knife/ Hello beautiful thing/ Maybe you could save my life.”

Of course, no E Street Band album is complete without a token ballad of small-town life like the tenth track “Long Walk Home,” where Bruce recalls a long-ago conversation with his father, the protagonist of many a Springsteen original: “You know that fl ag fl ying over the courthouse/ Means certain things are set in stone/ Who we are, what we’ll do and what we won’t.”

Those latter questions certainly determine a lot about a man and a musician and ultimately, the listener is glad to fi nd out that The Boss is still the same sad and cynical, rogue patriot of rock that was “Born to Run” all those years ago.

And, so, Bruce Springsteen ensures he doesn’t need sleight of hand (but defi nitely the E Street Band) to prove that the magic is still there.