Bruce Springsteen - 'Magic'

Bruce Springsteen is perhaps the most important rock and roll musician of the last 40 years. That’s kind of a grandiose, blanket statement, so here are some qualifications: Starting with 1973’s Greetings from Asbury Park, N.J., Springsteen began his 34-year run (and counting) as one of the most prolific American songwriters since Bob Dylan. Heck, this former “New Dylan” has a better average than the real Dylan. His ’70s and ’80s output, along with his live shows during this period, are a benchmark few would dare to match, let alone outdo.

Rock music was Springsteen’s gospel, and he in turn preached its word to millions of people through tunes like “Jungleland,” “Atlantic City,” “Badlands” and “Born in the U.S.A.” While the ’90s found the Boss out in the wilderness, critically and commercially shaky after years of thrilling the masses, the new millennium has found the musician with a newfound relevance, a second reign. His post-9/11 comfort piece The Rising found the musician doing what he had always done: Empathizing with folks over their trials and tribulations. Later albums Devils & Dust and We Shall Overcome: The Seeger Sessions allowed Springsteen to more openly air out his politics, condemning war profiteering, among other things.

Springsteen continues to shine in the 21st century with Magic, his 15th studio album. The record is as much a new piece as it is an overview of his past efforts, displaying song structures The E Street Band hasn’t played with since 1975’s Born to Run. It also allows Springsteen to more casually explore his political side, adding a layer of joviality that perhaps had been lacking on the somber Devils & Dust. Six years after 9/11, the guy is finally starting to lighten up.

Magic kicks off with the brisk pace of “Radio Nowhere.” Haunting and powerful, “Radio Nowhere” is a perfect pop rock song, self-contained at just under three-and-a-half minutes. It features drummer Max Weinberg’s insistent beat, an otherworldly sax solo from Clarence Clemons and a whole lot of guitar. Lyrically, the song berates the lack of originality in commercial radio music while musically providing just the sort of the rocker radio stations need. “Radio Nowhere” is the ideal driving song.

At the same, though, it also probably the worst choice for the album’s lead single, as it is completely unrepresentative of the other 11 tracks. Still great, though.

The record steers toward a more mid-tempo vibe with track two, “You’ll Be Comin’ Down.” Track three, “Livin’ in the Future,” is the best boogie-down “Tenth Avenue Freeze Out”-like track since… well, “Tenth Avenue Freeze Out.” Springsteen utilizes the more abstract poetic approach to lyrics that his first album was known for here, vaguely recalling militaristic imagery altering life for the worse for the narrator after Election Day. The words are obscure enough that they won’t turn off any listeners, though, and besides, the organ solo near the end is pretty sweet.

There is also a Beach Boys-ian approach to pop music present on the album in tracks four and six, “Your Own Worst Enemy” and “Girls in Their Summer Clothes.” Producer Brendan O’Brien might test listeners’ patience on these tracks, though, due to his abuse of vocal tracks and string sections. When John Lennon used a double vocal track for his songs, it reinforced his presence. When a baker’s dozen of Springsteens sing the chorus on “Girls in Their Summer Clothes,” it’s disenchanting. It sucks the listener out of the experience, as O’Brien smoothes out the edges and wrinkles in Springsteen’s voice to create a more enticing VH1-type ballad. It’s especially lame on “Girls” because the point of the whole song is that Springsteen has gotten older, more weathered; time, like “the girls,” has passed him by. The overabundance of string sections, which lack any warmth and merely fill space, further exasperates the situation. These are good songs; they could just stand to be a little more stripped down.

Some of the tunes, however, are produced just right, like “I’ll Work for Your Love.” Springsteen explores the connection between the spiritual and the sexual, like he’s adding a chapter to the Song of Solomon. The song opens strong with “Pour me a drink Theresa/in one of those glasses you dust off/and I’ll watch the bones in your back/Like the Stations of the Cross.” More biblical imagery pops up, but that’s the sensual winner right there.

More plaintive songs like “Gypsy Biker” and “Magic” recall the quiet, otherworldly highlights of acoustic albums Nebraska and The Ghost of Tom Joad, and while they sink the energy of “Radio Nowhere” and “I’ll Work for Your Love,” they do give the album some welcome variety.

The last great song on Magic is “Long Walk Home.” Springsteen walks around his hometown, much older but still as wide-eyed as he was as a child in Born in the U.S.A.’s “My Hometown.” A long walk in a town that’s not quite your home anymore sounds mighty fine.

While it is not without a few clunkers (the overwrought “Devil’s Arcade,” the heartfelt but cliché-ridden “Terry’s Song”), Magic is overall a satisfying work from Bruce Springsteen and his E Street Band. Not as inspirational as The Rising, not as depressing as Devils & Dust, Magic is an excellent extended summer-into-fall record. Springsteen is almost in his sixties, but he can still tap into the emotional, the political, the things which we all feel.