Night87

Nice review. Three and a half stars for Western Stars and Letter To You, which, while not masterpieces by any means, are more than decent and finally make logical sense in his senile discography, something that I believe could not be said of most of the albums after The Rising. In short, they should not be dismissed after just a few listens, remembering only the handful of truly successful tracks and wrinkling our noses at production choices, the lack of strong songs, or the unevenness.
If I Was The Priest and Song For Orphans (perhaps the most Dylan-esque song in the entire Springsteen repertoire) don’t lose their charm at all in the new full band versions, while Janey Needs a Shooter, updated for today, sounds rather forced and strained to me. As you say, I'll See You In My Dreams is very beautiful; the concluding tracks of the LPs are generally one of his strong suits. The rest neither excites me nor disturbs me, but the work is quite homogeneous, which hasn’t happened for too long with the E Street Band. Excellent work by Bittan, Giordano, and Tallent; I actually hoped for a bit more space for Lofgren.

One of my favorite albums in the genre.

The rightful criticism of the confusion and heterogeneity of all his recent albums (especially Working on a Dream but not only) has certainly never sat well with him. This album is born from that, perhaps even more than from Springsteen On Broadway. A different producer and the bringing back of Sancious in an attempt to release a pop album that is at least acceptable, an effort that has been largely successful. It had been since the decent but nothing more Devils&Dust on the folk side that he hadn't managed to publish an album with a unifying underlying idea that didn't sound like a patchwork of tracks thrown together haphazardly; not by chance, this time even the singles that had been less convincing when first released take on a sense within the entire work. The orchestra in some songs truly overdoes it, and two or three tracks could have been avoided, but at nearly 70 years old, Western Stars is indeed a nice album, three and a half stars that I gladly round up to four.

Great recommendation. "Stoned, Part I" from 2004 is also very beautiful.

Rory Gallagher included it among his favorite albums; I don’t consider it his peak, but Thunder Road and Jungleland alone would be enough to give meaning to several careers.

Unbearable she and her entourage.

Great choice

One of the most interesting releases from the latest Young

The most fitting vote for me is 4.5.