Bruce Springsteen: Magic (Take Two)

By: Dennis Cook

Editor’s Note: This review focuses on the musical content of Springsteen’s latest album. For a cogent look at the lyrics see Take One.

Musically speaking, this may be the least subtle album of 2007. There’s so much bombast, bells and ballyhoo it’s like listening to someone recite Shakespeare through a megaphone. Springsteen has long suckled at the teat of Phil Spector, Brian Wilson and other ’60s widescreen producers. At his best (Born To Run), he covered these influences in enough engine grease and bar band grit to avoid sounding like a nostalgia act but Magic (Sony) isn’t so lucky. Here, The Boss seems to be reaching back for a sound he hasn’t truly embraced since 1984’s Born In The U.S.A.. Even 2002’s E Street Band reunion The Rising didn’t try to ape past glories, instead opting to embrace producer Brendan O’Brien‘s natural non-subtlety – a high gloss, ultra clean modern radio sound familiar from O’Brien’s work with Pearl Jam, Stone Temple Pilots, Train and many others. Magic is an uncomfortable mix of the two strains – ’60s orchestral sweep and ’90s sledgehammer sonics – that rarely lets up. It’s actually kind of exhausting, and you’re relieved when eight tracks in you finally get a spot of gentility on the title cut – the only spot that echoes Springsteen’s last album of original material, 2005’s undeservedly ignored Devils & Dust. Springsteen’s singing matches the music, accentuating all of his worst “squeezing one out” grunting and moaning while he wails and laments like a Trojan in Homer’s Iliad. To their credit, the E Streeters and the additional studio musician muscle sound like they’re having a ball, throwing themselves into Springsteen’s songs with garage band gusto. It just so happens that their garage has a dearth of that Working Everyman’s under-the-hood authenticity that made “Racing In The Streets,” “Born To Run,” “Spirit In The Night” and “Rosalita (Come Out Tonight)” more than a mere homage to his influences. Today’s Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band sounds more like a tribute act to themselves than anything else, and that is indeed a little sad.

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