After Springsteen on Broadway and before another expected return to the E Street Band, Bruce Springsteen has taken another turn with Western Stars. It is neither the large soul-rock machinery of an E Street show nor the severe minimalism of The Ghost of Tom Joad. Instead, Springsteen surrounds his stories with strings, horns, steel guitar, banjo and echoing piano.
The reference point is less traditional country than the widescreen country-pop associated with Lee Hazlewood. Ron Aniello and Springsteen give the record an almost cinematic depth, using orchestration to enlarge the landscape without smothering the songs. Cellos and brass arrive as framing devices rather than decoration, and the arrangements retain enough open space for the voice to remain central.
Springsteen responds by singing differently. The familiar rough country inflections are still present, but much of the soul-rock shout has been replaced by a softer croon. The detailed production catches small changes in phrasing and breath that would disappear inside the E Street Band's usual volume. At sixty-nine, he sounds unusually comfortable allowing the voice to age rather than forcing it to behave as it did thirty years earlier.
The songs look outward across American landscapes and inward at the people moving through them. Compared with some of Springsteen's politically sharper records, the emphasis is more contemplative, concerned with distance, memory, solitude and the desire to keep moving. The ornate production suits that perspective because it gives those spaces an almost mythic scale.
Western Stars is a modest left turn from an artist whose catalogue contains many larger ones. Its distinction lies in the care of its surfaces: steel guitar against strings, distant piano, brass appearing at the edge of an arrangement, and a voice that no longer needs to overpower the room in order to command it.
GENRE: Americana
RELEASE DATE: June 14, 2019
PRODUCED BY: Ron Aniello & Bruce Springsteen
LABEL: Columbia Records
RATING: 7/10