Music Review: Bruce Springsteen, Working on a Dream

By Steve Morley

In his 30-plus years of singing about the American working class, Bruce Springsteen recently reached his biggest-ever audience during the halftime show of the Super Bowl. His 12-minute set required some adaptation from the rock performer, whose concerts routinely exceed three hours. All the raw energy, communal celebration and social commentary for which Springsteen is known had to be squeezed into the equivalent of a sardine tin. His new album, Working on a Dream, resembles the Super Bowl’s miniaturized and occasionally clumsy display of the elements that make Springsteen great. The scattershot collection condenses rowdy exuberance, sweeping ’60s-pop romanticism, thoughtful mid-tempo ruminations and a self-parody or two into a bursting package that lacks a thematic center and the common-man proclamations that have become Springsteen’s calling card.

Despite Springsteen’s recent public support for Barack Obama and his well-known opposition to Bush-era policies, Working on a Dream is non-political, though its title track symbolizes the potential for change engendered by a new administration. The song’s sturdy, workmanlike strum represents the labor needed to rebuild crumbling walls, while Springsteen’s Roy Orbison-esque vocal adds the bittersweet feeling of a desire still out of reach. The whistled ensemble interlude evokes teamwork, extending the song’s first-person message to one of shared efforts for a common goal.

Springsteen’s focus on nostalgia and creative liberty results in lightweight sketchbook entries like “Queen of the Supermarket” and “My Lucky Day,” one of several odes to relational bliss. But in between the simple romantic joy and freehand experimentation are glimpses of the writer’s poetic gift, made all the more intriguing by their unselfconscious quality. On the Beach Boys homage, “This Life,” the object of Springsteen’s affection is likened in various ways to creation itself. (“A bang, then stardust in your eyes/ A billion years or just this night/ Either way it'll be all right/ A blackness, then the light of a million stars/ As you slip into my car/ The evening sky strikes sparks.”)

Springsteen uses features of non-mortal design—grass, trees, sunrises, stars—as subtle but recurring motifs, calling attention to the daily splendor we can lose the ability to appreciate. Lines like “a million suns crested where you stood,” along with the CD booklet’s mixture of pastoral and surrealistic imagery, seem intent upon broadening the vision of the beholder—a notion examined in more depth on the dark and sobering “Life Itself.” (“Why do the things that we treasure most/ Slip away in time/ ’Til to the music we grow deaf, to God's beauty blind/ Why do the things that connect us slowly pull us apart?/ ’Til we fall away in our own darkness/ A stranger to our own hearts.”) On the fuzzed-out blues-rocker “Good Eye,” Springsteen suggests that greed and misguided personal ambition may be one culprit behind the myopia of which he speaks. (“I had all earthly riches/ I had each and every one/ I had all earthly riches/ I had each and every one/ But I had my good eye to the dark/ And my blind eye to the sun.”)

Springsteen’s latest work focuses less on the strength of his songwriting than on the sheer musical power and abandon that informed his late 1970s work. But if this isn’t the labor-intensive album fans have come to expect, the awareness of human struggle that undergirds Working on a Dream proves that the Boss is still on the job.

Audio Clips

"My Lucky Day"

"Queen of the Supermarket"

"Good Eye"

"This Life"