Review: Bruce Springsteen's new album, Letter To You
Letter To You by Bruce Springsteen is released on October 23.
There’s one huge negative attached to Springsteen’s first E Street Band record since 2014. That is the knowledge he won’t have the opportunity to take it on the road in the foreseeable future.
Letter To You is a blood-and-thunder roar of an album, clearly assembled with a view to having it ring out beneath stadium rafters. There are show-stoppers and rockers and power ballads that demand you hold your phone over your head and sway from side to side.
But the news is otherwise overwhelmingly positive. This is classic Springsteen with the pedal all the way to the floor. Lyrically, the now 71 year-old is fixing his gaze on the horizon and taking the temperature of America in the age of Trump.
The songs, meanwhile, are infused with zinging hooks while E Street regular Nils Lofgren’s lays down some of his sweetest riffs in years. Who knows if Christmas 2020 will be cancelled – but for Springsteen fans Letter To You is cause for celebration.
That is especially impressive considering Springsteen has spent the last several years struggling with writer’s block. The clouds finally lifted in April 2019 and a deluge of material came gushing forth.
“We made the album in only five days,” he said later. “It turned out to be one of the greatest recording experiences I’ve ever had.” “Greatest recording experience” is quite a claim from Springsteen. Yet Letter To You justifies his confidence. Opener 'One Minute You’re Here' is an archetypal Springsteen ballad, brimming with Norman Rockwell imagery. Folksy and autumnal, the song could pass for an outtake from his country-influenced Western Stars of last year. But he quickly blows the cobwebs out with the title track, self-evidently styled to be an anthem in the tradition of 'Born To Run'.
This is Springsteen as he was born to sound. Earnest, emotive, a little overwrought. The E Street Band seem overwrought too. Lofgren chimes in with crashing licks. Roy Bittan gives it plenty of welly on keyboards. Jake Clemons (nephew of the late Clarence) pipes in with heartfelt saxophone.
One surprise is the decision to include three compositions from the very start of his career. 'Janey Needs A Shooter', 'If I Was the Priest' and 'Song for Orphans' all pre-date his 1973 debut album, Greetings From Asbury Park, NJ.
In reaching so deep into his past even as he plunges ahead with one of his strongest releases in years, Springsteen is surely communicating something. Perhaps he is telling us that it is irrelevant if these songs are by Old Bruce or Young Bruce. All that matters is that he believes in them and that he wants his audience to do likewise.
“As great a record… as I ever heard Bruce make, and that’s saying a lot,” is Nils Lofgren’s appraisal of Letter To You. It’s hard to disagree.
