Western Stars
It\'s hard to imagine Bruce Springsteen describing a project of his as a concept album—too much prog baggage, too much expectation of some big, grand, overarching *story*. But nothing he\'s done across five decades as one of rock\'s most accomplished storytellers has had the singular, specific focus and locus, lyrically and musically, as this long-gestating solo effort—a lush meditation on the landscape of the western United States and the people who are drawn there, or got stuck there. Neither a bare-bones acoustic effort like *Nebraska* nor a fully tricked-out E Street Band affair, this set of 13 largely subdued character-driven songs (his first new ones since 2014\'s *High Hopes*, following five years immersed in memoir) is ornamented with strings and horns and slide guitar and banjo that sound both dusty and Dusty. They trade in the most familiar of American iconography—trains, hitchhikers, motels, sunsets, diners, Hollywood, and, of course, wild horses—but aren\'t necessarily antiquated; the clichés are jumping-off points, aiming for timelessness as much as nostalgia. The battered stuntman of “Drive Fast” could be licking, and cataloging, his wounds in 1959 or 2019. As convulsive and pivotal as the current moment may feel, restlessness and aimlessness and disenfranchisement are evergreen, and the songs are built to feel that way. In true Springsteen fashion, the personal is elevated to the mythical.
Bruce Springsteen returns with elegiac and wise songwriting conjuring the golden expanse of the American West; it’s his best studio album in years.
The album features some incredible songs, but traffics far too directly in the ’70s Americana that so affected him. He’s chasing a sound defined largely by nostalgia, and if anyone should know the dangers of trying to recapture the past, it’s Springsteen.
The Boss buckles up for his cowboy album and its the most charming and enjoyable he’s sounded in quite some time
The Boss breaks no new ground here, but this is a record that exudes class throughout
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Bruce Springsteen's latest LP evokes country-tinged California pop from the 1960s and '70s, sounding like nothing he's done before.
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Western Stars is a title that suggests wide-open, cinematic vistas, music made for the outer reaches of a widescreen.
Is there any element of Bruce Springsteen's mythology more important than the road? New Jersey, maybe, but being born to run inevitably mean...
First up – while the E-Street Band aren’t to be seen too much in the musician credits (its effectively a solo album of all new material) – 'Western Stars' goes hard on guest players.
Bruce Springsteen's 19th studio album finds the singer/songwriter indulging in string and brass orchestration to illuminate tales of searchers and risk-takers in pursuit of the American Dream.
The 2010s have been a tumultuous decade for fans of Bruce Springsteen. From the relative highs of 2012’s ‘Wrecking Ball’ and last
On Western Stars, Bruce Springsteen's first solo recording in 14 years, the primary influences are the borrowed elements of country, folk, and baroque pop...
Trailed as a break with tradition, the lush orchestrations and swooning vocals of this finely wrought album, in fact, chime beautifully with Springsteen’s history
When Bruce Springsteen started out, he was a young man, frustrated at small-town life, roaring that he was born to run.
By structuring the music around an orchestra, there is a remarkable freshness to his sound