Bruce Springsteen
Western Stars

What could modern music ever add to everything that's already been written?

Does rock still exist, those famous three chords for guitar, bass, and drums?

Does the music of the Author still have authors, or is it all "plastic" pop to sell a few singles?

The answer to these questions is, perhaps, in the latest Western Stars of the son of New Jersey, a seventy-year-old who started his career with the dream of bringing together in his songs, the rock of the masters with the music of the Author, Elvis Presley with Bob Dylan.

This album, in the dozens of reviews written, has been given the evocative adjective "symphonic," defining it as a "new" chapter in Springsteen's discography.

All well and good, until you remember that the second work of Springsteen, The Wild the Innocent & the E Street Shuffle from 1973, ended with a classical-symphonic piece titled New York City Serenade; the same "symphony" even appeared in the debut album, Greetings from Asbury Park NJ, inside another gem titled Lost in the Flood. When Springsteen performed these pieces at the beginning of his career, his audience often booed him: for example, it happened that he played New York City Serenade at the end of the evening as the last piece and people got furious because they wanted a festive finale with a "bang".

Yet, Bruce for months placed his "own" New York City Serenade at the end of the show, sitting alone at the piano without a band, because this, so he said, made him feel good by giving the show a sense of completeness.

The album contains three entirely acoustic pieces, Hitch Hikin, Somewhere North of Nashville, and Moonlight Motel, that seem to come from the sessions of Nebraska, preserving the essential sound and a profound sense of the protagonist's "loneliness", Bruce himself, bordering on annihilation, between rides given by perfect strangers, lonely nights with a list of things done wrong somewhere north of Nashville, and solo Jack intoxication in the car at the Moonlight Motel parking lot.

In the opinion of the writer, these are among the most beautiful pieces written by Springsteen, at the same level of emotional power as the masterpieces of Nebraska.

Another component of this Western Stars is that of "rock".

I imagine the opposition of many readers: how can there be rock in a Springsteen album without the E Street Band?

Indeed! Tucson Train is a rock piece in the tension of the narrative, based on the desperate wait for five fifteen, the arrival time of the train from Tucson with the protagonist's daughter (or wife) on board, fresh from the endeavor of having found a new job leaving behind a dark period after being unemployed.

There is rock fervor also in a piece like The Wayfarer, a profoundly blues-based piece, which gradually grows until it becomes a rock that in certain aspects recalls the musical atmospheres of the old Fire: here too the protagonist is a man full of desire, who speaks to his "little one" telling her that while everyone sleeps, he is out searching, perhaps, for new love.

Intensely rock is also Sleepy Joe's Café, almost rockabilly, with lots of Hammond "confetti" that seem to be a tribute to the old and never forgotten E Street Band keyboardist, Danny Federici; the lyrics are a burst of joy, talking about people forgetting problems and sorrows thanks to the band playing blues every night at Sleepy Joe's Café: the cathartic power of music!

Rock, with a soul-new wave aftertaste, are also Sundown and There Goes My Miracle, ingenious crosses between Roy Orbison and David Bowie. The lyrics revisit the themes of the initial acoustic triptych: the lone man, who has lost his woman and veers dangerously, almost touching self-destructive thoughts.

Between folk and rock, there is the more purely "symphonic" soul of the album which contemplates sophisticated melodic openings: I'm talking about masterpieces like Western Stars, which presents a crescendo of perfectly mixed strings and brass, Stones, with a lonely violin halfway through the track that brings the undersigned back to the Dylan-like atmospheres of Desire, Drive Fast, with a jazz-style piano (played by the first pianist of the E Street Band, David Sancious) amidst almost gospel atmospheres, Chasin' Wild Horses with a strongly Morricone-like flavor.

In none of the three souls of the album, folk, rock, and symphonic, do I include Hello Sunshine, the favorite of the writer, a piece, as often happens when commenting on absolute masterpieces, not classifiable in any musical "genre".

A track that makes simplicity its greatness: it all rests on a brush sound simulating the run of an old train on the rails.

"Hello sunshine, won't you stay?"

That’s my thought at the end of the listening and the hope that in the future, this artist, still gives us "sunshine beams" like this album outside the rules of the music business of these sad times.