Album Review: Bruce Springsteen – Western Stars (Columbia)

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Bruce Springsteen returns with his 19th album and first album of all new material since 2012’s Wrecking Ball.

Of course the first question you have to ask yourself is, “Do I really need to hear another Bruce Springsteen album?”

No matter how big a fan you are, I would say one can’t help but be underwhelmed by his more recent output such as High Hopes and Magic.

That’s how I felt until I heard the first single from Western Stars.

Hello Sunshine sounded like nothing Bruce had done before. It had a breezy, nostalgic charm driven by a shuffling drum beat and featuring a pedal steel guitar weaving in and out. Sure, it sounded like a cross between Harry Nilsson’s Everybody’s Talkin’ and Danny O’Keefe’s Goodtime Charlie’s Got The Blues, but that familiarity seemed to make it that much more intriguing. And those strings…never heard them used like that on a Springsteen record.

Along with the single, Bruce released a statement claiming that the new album was inspired by “California pop music of the 1970s”, naming Glen Campbell and Burt Bacharach specifically (although both of them made their best music in the 60s)

I can hear the Jimmy Webb/Glen Campbell influence in a song like Sundown, with its twangy guitar and lyric about a guy who is “2500 miles from where I want to be”…think Wichita Lineman … but, not much Bacharach.

Instead, it sounds like pure Springsteen filtered through the sun kissed San Bernardino valley with a frequent foray out into the desert.

Western Stars is a collection of 13 songs populated by down and out characters, the kind Bruce has written about before back in the days of Nebraska and Tunnel Of Love.

The title track is a perfect example. The Western Stars are not the type found in the sky, but out of work, semi-retired actors whose glory days were appearing in films with John Wayne and are now reduced to shooting Viagra and credit card ads.

Drive Fast (The Stuntman) details a stuntman attempting to carry on despite the fact, “I got two pins in my ankle and a busted collarbone”. Reading that line off the page, one can’t help but hear Springsteen’s adopted western drawl singing it.

Although Bruce gets help from a couple of collaborators…former E Streeter David Sancious on piano, and wife Patti Sialfa on backing vocals, the real co-star of this record is the string section.

Those strings swell up on the second verse of album opener Hitch Hikin’ and never seem to leave.

They act as a kind of duet partner with Bruce on The Wayfarer, striking up a call and response with the vocalist as he sings, “I’m a wayfarer baby, I drift from town to town”.

There’s restlessness, regret and loneliness throughout the album, but there are a few bright spots.

Sleepy Joe’s Café is an upbeat Tex-Mex-style dance number that would have sat nicely on a Sir Douglas album.

And Hello Sunshine, which shows up as the second to last track, finds our protagonist looking on the bright side, speaking as a guy who until now, “had a little sweet spot for the rain”.

Western Stars closes with a visit to Moonlight Motel…a place on a blank stretch of road where “two young folks could up and disappear”, possibly to avoid the fate of the characters heard from earlier. Instead of the orchestral production that borders on the Spectorian, this one is stripped down to just voice guitar and pedal steel, with a hint of strings.

A gentle, thoughtful closer to an album that begs to be heard again and again.

Marty Duda

 

 

Marty Duda
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