Review: Bruce Springsteen - Working On A Dream

Bruce Springsteen's Working On A Dream, revels in love, makes politics personal, and has a keen youthful energy coupled with bracing adult lyrics

Isha Singh Sawhney

Bruce Springsteen - Working On A Dream
Columbia Records
The score: ★★★1/2

Two weeks after Bruce Springsteen resumed his role as voice of America at President Obama’s We Are One concert, The Boss’ new album Working On A Dream hit stores. The man who “spent 35 years writing about America and its people,” in his 24th album despite the title has not the remotest references to political issues. Despite the reference to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s speech, this new album isn't just about politics.

Bruce Springsteen’s album embraces love with optimistic open arms, and isn’t shy about shouting it out to the world. Working On A Dream sees Bruce return to pop symphonies of the 60s, and reiterates his image of a working class guy from New Jersey, with compassionate populism, who sings about jobs, families and love.

This fourth album with producer Brendan O’Brien brings out more of the best side of Bruce that we saw in his last album Magic. Beginning work on this album immediately after Magic was finished, Bruce Springsteen moves on from the fear, shame and anger that he felt under the Bush era then.

The album begins with Outlaw Pete, slightly superfluous eight minute long tragicomic Western fable. Complete with intense guitar strums, dramatic cello symphonies, and oft changing crescendos, the song talks of frontier lore and justice. The album ends on a similar personal note, with Bruce Springsteen sings a first person ballad, The Wrestler, the Golden Globe winning song, written for the Mickey Rourke’s film.

Bruce goes from unabashed love in Kingdom of Days, where he sings with barely contained happiness, “With you I don’t hear the minutes ticking by, I don’t feel the hours as they fly, I don’t feel the summer as it wanes, Just a subtle change of light upon your face.” To the jagged guitar strums of Life Itself where he looks at the darker side of love, leaving you feeling like the this simple songs contains some hard won lessons and wisdom.

As he questions love, he asks, “Why do the things we treasure most slip away in time/Till to the music we grow deaf and to God's beauty blind, in this song, which you’re sure to play on repeat.”

The title track is a sunny anthemic blue-collar song, with a rare show of unabashed optimism, Bruce sings about making it real someday, looking for a ray of hope. The Last Carnival is an obvious elegy to the founding E Street Band keyboardist, Danny Federici, who died from cancer last year, while Queen of the Supermarket sees Bruce enjoying his shopping cart over a Cadillac, swooning over a check out girl. The narrator has an overblown obsession with a check out girl, and bored girl with a smile that blows the place apart. 

Though the album has absolutely no political references, you can sense the obvious joy Bruce feels at the turn of events in America. And we know one person coveting his job. At a New York City Obama fund-raiser in October that Springsteen attended, President Obama said, “The reason I’m running for president is because I can’t be Bruce Springsteen.”