OFF THE RECORD: Bruce Springsteen - Working on a Dream

(Courtesy of Columbia Records.)

My dad has been a massive fan of The Boss since well before I was born. It's not uncommon for him to see Bruce play three or four times on one tour, flying to Toronto or Portland or Tacoma just to watch him follow up his shows from GM Place. Thusly, when I came of age and began to make my way through classic rock history, Bruce Springsteen was one of the last artists I listened to (given the fact that I was a teenager and it's supposedly never cool to like the same music your parents do). Maybe this is why my dad and I had such different reactions to Working On A Dream, Springsteen's latest studio album. After thirty-odd years of following Bruce's work, a person’s bound to have different expectations than someone who’s only recently come into the fold. My father's a little disappointed with Working On A Dream, most likely because Springsteen's lyrics have less substance this time around.

He's got a point. "Outlaw Pete" kicks things off with a lush, heavily orchestrated eight-minute tale of crime and adventure in the Wild West. But lyrically, Springsteen breaks no ground that wasn't broken a few centuries ago when Blood & Thunder cowboy novels became all the rage, though he still manages to inject some humour into a familiar archetype with couplets like, "He was born a little baby on the Appalachian Trail / At six months old, he'd done three months in jail.” Meanwhile, “Queen of the Supermarket” finds Springsteen insulting the intelligence of his audience by stretching his working-class hero shtick past breaking point. Lines like, "A dream awaits in aisle number two," or, "Though a company cap covers her hair / Nothing can hide the beauty waiting there," look bad enough on the page, but they sound downright farcical when buoyed by swelling strings and Beach Boys-style harmonies.

On the other hand, Springsteen is packing a mighty melodic punch on Working On A Dream. “My Lucky Day” and the title track are as good as any pop song Springsteen's ever penned. The former is a propulsive, euphorically soaring love song while the latter sees Springsteen's hammer-n’-nails lyrics married to a chorus that harkens back to vintage Roy Orbison. And while Brendan O'Brien – Bruce's go-to producer this decade – has his detractors amongst the Springsteen faithful, his contemporary touch fits these songs, which aim to be more pretty than gritty, as he irons out the wrinkles in Bruce's voice.

Given that there were only fifteen months between the release of Bruce's last album Magic and Working On A Dream, it should come as no surprise that the album is underwritten and leans hard on easy rhymes and basic chord progressions. What is surprising however, is how a man who's already got his legacy written in the history books in indelible ink still sounds so hungry. Sure, he’s playing Super Bowl XLIII but even the money and convenient timing shouldn’t be motivation alone to put out a comparatively average album. Then again, it’s not everyday you have a 59-year-old man trying to make his own Pet Sounds, is it? That's got to be worth a listen.