Bruce Springsteen - High Hopes

Bruce Springsteen

High Hopes

14 January 2014

Columbia

2.5 stars out of 5

 

Bruce Springsteen’s eighteenth studio album, High Hopes, arrives almost exactly forty-one years after his first. It features a couple of covers of songs by bands associated with the punk scene of the 1970s, Suicide and The Saints, as well as contributions on guitar on eight tracks by Rage Against the Machine’s Tom Morello. Morello even shares lead vocals duty on a(nother) reworking of “The Ghost of Tom Joad.” Is the 64-year-old Springsteen attempting to gain some underground cred through these decisions? Upon listening to the record, the answer is decidedly “No.” The twelve tracks which make up the album are mostly re-recordings of demos, outtakes, and previous studio versions à la Tattoo You, and all twelve (including the covers) sound like generic Springsteen, albiet with a few production touches which indicate that Springsteen is at least vaguely aware that there exist other forms of music than American trad rock.

I’m going to be blunt: this record is pretty bland. If, for some reason, you thought that Born in the U.S.A. was The Boss’s shining moment and you really can’t stand Nebraska, well, that makes you a bit crazy, but it would also make you more apt to enjoy this record than anything by Suicide, The Saints, or Rage Against the Machine. Morello’s legendary inventive guitar playing is too often buried in the background instead of being given enough space to bloom. This would appear to be the natural consequence of his being asked to add a bit of that thing he does here and there in the studio rather than having been in on the songwriting process from the beginning. It’s a bit like resurrecting Keith Moon and asking him to play the triangle while your regular unimaginative drummer takes up most of the drumscape.

The album’s key track is “The Ghost of Tom Joad.” If you’re keeping score at home, you’ll remember that Springsteen already released this song as the title track of his 1995 album. More importantly, you might recall that Rage Against the Machine covered this song twice, in 1997 and again in 2001. It’s the only track on High Hopes in which Morello disengages the parking brake and lets his guitar loose, and it’s the only truly memorable moment on the album. The fact that you’ve already heard it before in three different studio versions by the artists present should clue you in as to how very little new ground Springsteen is really breaking here, despite any efforts he might be making to do so.

reviewed by Richard Krueger