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 Betreff des Beitrags: Presse-Internet
BeitragVerfasst: 21.01.2009 14:38 
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http://blogs.tampabay.com/popmusic/2009 ... rking.html

January 20, 2009
REVIEW: "Working on a Dream"

DreamIt landed at your feet like a flaming arrow: Radio Nowhere, the lapel-wrenching opening cut from Bruce Springsteen’s 2007 album Magic. With wee Nils Lofgren knifing out a serrated solo, the Boss cupped hands to mouth and hollered at America during the Bush administration: “Is there anybody alive out there?”

The answer? Hell yeah!

His new album, Working on a Dream, in stores Jan. 27, opens with Outlaw Pete, a flabby, floppy eight-minute droner about a cowboy in a complacent land. At the end, Pete is frozen in ice, like a fudge pop or Austin Powers. Again, the Boss shouts at his countrymen, this time entering the Obama years: “Can you hear me?”

The answer? Um, can we get back to you on that? We, uh, have a burrito in the microwave.

In one of the more head-scratching moves of Springsteen’s storied career, Working on a Dream is a 13-track slog dominated by unfocused mid-tempo storytelling. It’s peppered with a few gems, but you have to wait ’til Track 7 to find the first. It doesn’t so much rock ’n’ roll as stumble and sway, weary B-sides in search of a theme (resilience? renewal?) and a Red Bull. Many of these songs came out of the Magic sessions; the orphans needed a home apparently.

Whereas Magic returned Bruce to the populist poke-in-the-eye of Born in the U.S.A. — he was cranky and catchy, the most lethal of musical weaponry — Working on a Dream sounds like a Springsteen cover band that’s finally decided to write a few songs of its own. He’s done this before, and he’s done it better.

You would think Working on a Dream would be hopeful, fun, a possible last tangle with his indomitable E Street Band. Maybe it would include some fun, rousing rock ’n’ roll a la Cover Me or Born to Run, something new for him to uncork at the Feb. 1 Super Bowl show right here in Tampa.

But alas, there’s nothing to inspire — us or him. It's boring. Even worse, the Boss could have recorded his 16th studio album with any band. That’s a shame, because the disc, produced and mixed by preferred knob-twiddler Brendan O’Brien, was recorded during a recent world tour with his beloved E Streeters. It should be infused with a butt-kicking energy. Instead, everyone sounds like they need a good, long nap.

First single Working on a Dream (LISTEN), with its sepia-drippy 10th Avenue sing-along, and the piano-chuggy My Lucky Day (LISTEN), a Mad Libs version of his own Roll of the Dice, are seeming salutes to the promise of Barack Obama, but the sentiment is sappy, rote. “I’ve waited at your side / I’ve carried the tears you’ve cried.” Ick.

Most of the album is coated in such a safe gloss that it's hard to pay attention to the poetry. The Drifters-esque Queen of the Supermarket ("A dream awaits in aisle number two...”) (LISTEN) might be a continuation of Magic’s charming Girls In Their Summer Clothes, but I lost interest early and just figured Springsteen was horny for a girl at Target.

Then there’s the cloying Life Itself and the Byrdsian blahness of Surprise, Surprise in which Springsteen’s vocal delivery is a flat, near-apathetic warble. Too many of his vocals sound sandpapered to a smooth, throaty dullness. When did he become Michael Bolton?

That’s why songs such as the reckless blues stomp of Good Eye are such a thrill. “Standing by the road, where the cold black water runs,” Springsteen wails grit and grace through one of those bullet mikes he loves so much, and you just know a black dusty boot is keeping the menacing beat.

After a tough haul, the album ends, lo and behold, with two stunners, where we finally hear the Boss fully engaged. On The Last Carnival (LISTEN), he pines for “Billy” but he means Danny — Danny Federici — the E Street Band’s longtime organist who died last year from melanoma. Springsteen’s heart and voice break as he sings: “We won’t be dancing together on the highwire / Facing the lions with you by my side anymore...”

On The Wrestler (LISTEN), which just won a Golden Globe for best song from the titular flick, an orchestral preface leads into a tragic tale of a man struggling to find something to fight for. It’s a keeper, but it’s also ironic. Springsteen might miss George W. Bush more than he knows.

January 20, 2009

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BeitragVerfasst: 21.01.2009 14:41 
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http://prairieprogressive :shock: :shock: :shock: .com/2009/01/19/music-review-springsteens-working-on-a-dream/

Music Review: Springsteen’s Working on a Dream

As with his last release, Bruce Springsteen’s Working on a Dream, set for release next week, leaked to the internet. That isn’t all that surprising given the existence of advance review copies and, among other things, NPR will begin streaming the entire album just before midnight tonight.

working_on-a-dream426As a result of the leak, I had the opportunity to listen to Working on a Dream a few times over the weekend. Like Magic, I’ll hold off on a final verdict until I’ve listened to it more. But I have a variety of general and specific impressions, not all of them positive.

First, unlike Magic and The Rising, the new record isn’t built around any political or social issues. Instead, many of the songs are more personal, looking at aging, loss and, primarily, love.

Second, although it’s would be easy to say a particular cut could fit on one of the last few E Street Band albums (or even the Seeger Sessions work), there is a different sound to this album. For example, it is more heavily orchestrated than prior E Street Band releases. Likewise, some of the background vocals seem to be more from the pop school than what we usually expect from Springsteen and the band.

Third, as usuaal, Springsteen incorporates a variety of styles and influences. Thus, in addition to a couple noted below, the short (barely two minutes) “Tomorrow Never Knows” uses a guitar opening seemingly straight off a Creedence Clearwater Revival tune to introduce its predominantly country shuffle feel.

Undoubtedly, there are what appear to be a few misfires. For example, the lengthy opening track, “Outlaw Pete,” seems a bit strained and almost overwrought. A fable about an extremely young outlaw who later seeks to change his life, it contains a riff that could have come right off Magic but is swamped by orchestration, leaving the music feeling almost like a takeoff on Coldplay’s Viva La Vida.

“Good Eye,” in contrast, sounds much like Nebraska’s “Reason to Believe” as Springsteen performed it on his Devils and Dust tour: fuzzed up harmonica and distorted vocal built around a blues structure. “Surprise, Surprise” is a song about a birthday, one in which the title word is repeated more than 40 times in three and a half minutes. (Gee, does that mean there was a surprise birthday party?) I’m also somewhat ambivalent about “Queen of the Supermarket,” another orchestrated piece, this one dealing with unrequited love for a supermarket cashier (with some pretty serious feelings about the supermarket itself).

Some songs are more standard E Street Band fare, such as “My Lucky Day” and “Kingdom of Days.” Both are essentially love songs, with the latter even reflecting on aging with lines like “We laugh beneath the covers/And count the wrinkles and the grays.” Also falling squarely in the love song category is “This Life,” with an expansive Beach Boys feel similar to that on Magic’s “The Girls in Their Summer Clothes.” The lyrics are even more spacious than the sound, with lines like “My universe at rest” and “This lonely planet never looked so good.” Just as the songs I consider misfires will garner split opinions, these will too.

“The Last Carnival” is likely the most emotional for fans. It’s a remembrance of Danny Federici, the E Street Band’s organ and accordion player who died of cancer last April. Built around a carnival getting ready to move on to the next town, Springsteen asks “Where have you gone my handsome Billy?” and “Where are you now darling Billy?”. Longtime Springsteen fans will immediately recognize the setting and those lines as referring to “Wild Billy’s Circus Story,” a track off 1973’s The Wild, the Innocent & the E Street Shuffle that featured Federici’s accordion work. Springsteen sings that the carnival will be “be riding the train without you tonight” and although “The light that was in your eyes is gone away … The thing in you that made me ache is gonna stay.”

I do have a criticism with regard to the song, though. Although it supposedly closes the album, “The Wrestler,” for which Springsteen recently won a Golden Globe award, appears 20 or so seconds later as a “bonus track.” Although that’s a fine tune, the homage to Federici would have carried more impact and meaning had it truly been the last song on the CD.

At bottom, I am not as impressed with Working on a Dream as I initially was with The Rising, Devils and Dust or Magic. But Springsteen’s songs always seem to reveal additional layers on further listening. That’s held true on my first few listens to this release and, thus, my overall impression may change with time. There certainly is enough of merit to make it a decent addition to the E Street canon.

Finally, I want to repeat what I said following the internet release of Magic: If you stumble across the music online, consider this leak nothing more than a preview. There’s no reason or excuse for not buying the CD when it hits the shelves next week. I know I will, even with my mixed feelings toward it

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Focus

http://www.focus.de/kultur/musik/platte ... 63631.html

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http://www.regioactive.de/story/7791/re ... dream.html

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http://www.sputnikmusic.com/review_28793

"Producer Brendon 'O Brien must be given much credit here. Fleshing out the sound of the excellent group of players that is The E Street Band and encouraging Bruce to sing out in a big clear voice...."

:D :D :D

"Through it all the band is steady and true, Bruce is in fine voice, and the message is clear: love, so it seems, can conquer all."

:knuddel :knuddel :knuddel :thumbs1

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BeitragVerfasst: 21.01.2009 22:31 
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In der Internetausgabe der ZEIT gibt es auch eine Rezension. Ich hoffe, sie wurde nicht schon an anderer Stelle gepostet - bei geschätzten 99 "WOAD"-Threads verliere ich so langsam den Überblick :?

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10.5.03 Ludwigshafen * 15.6.05 Frankfurt * 16.5.06 Amsterdam (NL) * 6.11.06 Köln * 1.12.07 Arnheim (NL) * 16.6.08 Düsseldorf *
27.6.08 Paris (F) * 30.6.09 Bern (CH) * 3.7.09 Frankfurt * 4.7.12 Paris (F) * 5.7.12 Paris (F) *


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BeitragVerfasst: 21.01.2009 22:49 
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Gewohnt kompetent: Die Zeit!

"Wenn es brennt, wird wieder irgendjemand hinaus auf die Straße müssen"

...wird es dann noch der Boss sein?

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BeitragVerfasst: 21.01.2009 23:24 
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C.Kid hat geschrieben:
Dann wird er wohl so Sachen wie Badlands nicht spielen .. 8[


Wie in aller Welt kommt man da jetzt drauf? :?


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Malerknecht hat geschrieben:
http://www.tagesspiegel.de/kultur/;art772,2711846

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Bild

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http://www.rollingstone.com/artists/bru ... on_a_dream

brian hiatt bringts auf den punkt!

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BeitragVerfasst: 22.01.2009 14:12 
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C.Kid hat geschrieben:
DocFederfeld hat geschrieben:
In der Internetausgabe der ZEIT gibt es auch eine Rezension.


"Er lässt Heerscharen von Gitarren aufmarschieren und Saxofone röhren"


....wo :?:


Das darfst Du mich nicht fragen :mrgreen: - ich vermute aber mal im Studio - wo sonst :wink:

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10.5.03 Ludwigshafen * 15.6.05 Frankfurt * 16.5.06 Amsterdam (NL) * 6.11.06 Köln * 1.12.07 Arnheim (NL) * 16.6.08 Düsseldorf *
27.6.08 Paris (F) * 30.6.09 Bern (CH) * 3.7.09 Frankfurt * 4.7.12 Paris (F) * 5.7.12 Paris (F) *


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http://www.taz.de/1/leben/musik/artikel ... ionsalbum/

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Malerknecht hat geschrieben:
http://www.taz.de/1/leben/musik/artikel/1/das-inaugurationsalbum/

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"
Manche, wie die streichergeschwängerte Schnulzigkeit von "Queen of the Supermarket" hätte man vielleicht nicht unbedingt entdecken wollen. Andere aber enthüllen eine ungeahnte Leichtigkeit, ja bisweilen sogar Eleganz, die man der Altherrentruppe nicht zugetraut hätte: "What Love Can Do" ist ein prima vorwärts treibender Folkrocksong mit einem irgendwie irischen Gitarrensolo, "Surprise, Surprise" ein eingängiger Pop-Ohrwurm, "Good Eye" ein wundervoll hysterischer Redneck-Kneipenbrüller. Im gleich anschließenden Country-Versuch "Tomorrow Never Knows" wächst nicht nur im Text grün das Gras.

Bruce Springsteen ist stets der empfindlichste Seismograf seines Landes gewesen. Glaubt man ihm, dann ist Amerika neuerdings wieder auf dem Weg, das gute Amerika zu werden. Was der alte Herr kann, das sollte ein so junges Land ja wohl auch hinkriegen. "

Gigantisch... :D

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