San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
Bruce Springsteen
Western Stars
Bruce Springsteen is in a sentimental mood.
Between publishing his autobiography, “Born to Run,” revisiting
1980’s “The River” on tour and performing his career-spanning
“Springsteen on Broadway” residency, the 69-year-old Rock & Roll
Hall of Fame inductee has spent the past few years facing down his storied past.
On his first studio album in five years, “Western Stars,” the Boss dons his flannel shirt and dusty boots, remembers that he was born to run and bears down hard on the gas pedal.
“You know I always liked that empty road / No place to be and miles to go,” he sings on “Hello Sunshine,” a song that evokes the character-driven baroque pop of the ’60s and ’70s pumped out by artists with canyondeep voices like Glen Campbell and Neil Diamond.
Just as the string-slathered music hardly resembles the barnstorming arena rock of the E Street Band, the songs here don’t take listeners for another spin around Springsteen’s usual New Jersey haunts. Instead, the songwriter sets his sites on desert skies (“Moonlight Motel”), last-chance towns (“Sleepy Joe’s Café”) and Hollywood has-beens (“Drive Fast (The Stuntman)”).
It’s a side of Springsteen we haven’t seen in decades, and it’s quite a ride.